OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 121 



in color, the females generally being quite dark. The mature in- 

 sects were illustrated in my first Report (Figs. 77, 78). 



I had, last summer, an extensive brood of these little crickets in 

 one of my breeding cages, and succeeded in rearing them to the 

 winged state, which they assume during the fore part of July. The 

 male produces a very shrill noise by the friction of his front wings, 

 but the female is silent. 



This Snowy Cricket shares with his more robust Jumping com- 

 panion in the nefarious midnight-work of gnawing, girdling or sever- 

 ing different parts of the grape thyrse, causing the berries either to 

 [Fig. 50. J shrivel or fall, and produc- 



^,<.«^^^^S5^ ^^^^f^--' ^'?^^^"?^^^^^^ ing what is often known as 

 ^^^^^^u~ ^^^^' ' "shanking." It is while the 



^ r y grapes are yet green that 



they are mostly severed, and the ground beneath vines is often scat- 

 tered with this green fruit, where the cause of the trouble is little 

 suspected. Such useless waste and destruction is doubly provoking, 

 and as the virtues of their youth do not atone for the bad habits of 

 their after-life, these jumping crickets must be classed with the bad 

 bugs. The infested twigs often die beyond the punctures of both 

 these species ; and the best remedy is to cut and burn the twigs in 

 winter. 



In his twelfth annual Report, (Trans. N. Y. State Agr. Soc, 1867, p. 

 889), Dr. Fitch elaborately describes these eggs, which he, for some 

 unaccountable reason, and without question, refers to the insect next to 

 be treated of— viz., the Buffalo Tree-hopper. He certainly never bred 

 this last insect from such eggs, and how he could for a moment imag- 

 ine that any but a much larger insect, possessed of a much longer 

 ovipositor, could insert so many long eggs into the very pith of twigs, 

 is difficult to conceive. The fact that he mistook the real slits made 

 by this Tree-hopper, or an allied species, for the crescent cuts of the 

 Plum Curculio (see 3rd Report, p. 38), and was thoroughly imbued 

 with that error, may aflbrd some explanation. My good friend has 

 not, I regret to say, been in the habit of correcting his own errors; 

 but nevertheless I draw his attention to this one — not as a fault-finder, 

 but for the sake of truth. We are all liable to mistakes! 



The egg-punctures of this Buffalo Troe-hopper (C6?'e.s« huhalus, 

 Fabr.) are represented above (Fig. 50). The punctures consist of a 

 row, more or less straight, of little raised slits in the bark (5), in each 

 of which, upon careful examination, may be found an oval, dark-col- 

 ored egg (a, enlarged). These eggs hatch about the middle of May, 

 and the young are at first brownish, with a formidable 

 row of ten pairs of compound spines, and looking 

 totally unlike the mature insect. After the first and 

 second molts, they are still furnished with these 

 sprangling spines on the back, but are of a paler 

 color, with some transverse lilac-colored lines (Fig. 



