Notes on the Commoner Species 157 



song that is anything but sweet, especially to persons 

 not fortunate enough to possess screened porches, 

 though, luckily, they do not much care to enter the 

 houses. Some of the streets in summer resorts smell 

 like joss houses with the burning of punk. 



This species mates readily in captivity. Dr. Dupree 

 made a number of breeding experiments with labora- 

 tory-reared specimens. He found that the insects 

 would live from twenty-five to thirty-five days. They 

 generally feed twice before the first ovulation, which 

 may occur eight days after emergence, the eggs being 

 deposited singly on top of the water. In the labora- 

 tory we could induce them to lay nowhere save on 

 water, though Mr. Viereck induced them to oviposit 

 on moist material but not on water, dry sand, nor lint; 

 and Dr. Smith finds that in New Jersey the eggs are 

 laid all over the marsh mud and not on water, re- 

 maining on the mud or the roots of the grass tussocks 

 until hatched by an inrush of water of the proper 

 temperature. Thus it is seen that what may be true 

 of a species in one place may not be so in another. 

 Dr. Smith kept ova indoors, and exposed to the 

 air of the room; they collapsed, as did also some in 

 a closet when on lint or garden soil, but not those 

 kept on the mould of black grass marsh. Dr. Dupree 

 finds both in this and other species that if the 

 eggs are dried before they darken, they collapse 

 and will not hatch. It was noted by Dr. Smith that 

 during a long, dry season the females would retain 

 the eggs, which would develop so far as to blacken 

 in the ovaries before oviposition took place, but nor- 

 mally eggs are white when extruded. 



