N0 . 1124. REVISION OF THK MELAXOPLISCTDDER. 1(>9 



6. SPBETUS SERIES. 



This group is a very homogeneous one and comprises the species of 

 Melanoplus which are especially destructive to vegetation by their 

 immense numbers and more or less extended flights, such destructive- 

 ness being almost confined to its members. The pronotuin of the male 

 is transverse or quadrate or feebly longitudinal, and the interspace 

 between the mesosternal lobes in the same sex varies from a little 

 longer than broad to fully twice as long as broad, the mesosternum in 

 front of the lobes centrally elevated to form a very low and blunt 

 conical tubercle or boss. The tegmina are always fully developed, 

 usually much surpassing the tips of the hind femora (though in one 

 case not nearly reaching them), more or less maculate (only immaculate 

 by individual exception), and the hind tibiae are variably colored, but 

 either red or green (very rarely blue or yellow), and have nine to 

 thirteen spines in the outer series. 



The supraanal plate of the male is subtriangular, rather long, with 

 straight or sinuous lateral margins; the furcula consists of a pair of 

 slender, tapering, parallel or divergent, generally feebly depressed 

 fingers, generally extending over the basal fourth of the supraanal 

 plate; the cerci are rather broad and nearly straight and nearly flat 

 lamellae, the apical half narrower than the basal, generally through 

 oblique excision of the lower margin, and usually bent upward a little, 

 rounded or subtruncate at tip and from one and a half to three times 

 as long as broad; the subgenital plate is haustrate, about as broad as 

 long, more or less elevated apically and has the apical margin mesially 

 notched. 



The species, seven in number, are of a medium or moderately large 

 size and range widely (especially M. atlanis, the range of which is 

 almost or quite equal to that of the group), occurring in every part of 

 the United States, from Atlantic to Pacific, excepting most of California 

 and the southernmost of the Atlantic States; members of the group 

 occur also, but apparently in scanty numbers, as far beyond our southern 

 borders as Central Mexico, and on the north, in full abundance, iu 

 Canada from ocean to ocean; but this group apparently does not 

 extend so far north as the femur-rubrum series, for it is not known 

 from Newfoundland or Labrador, nor about Hudson Bay, though in 

 the west it reaches the Arctic Circle, two of the species occurring in 

 Alaska. 



21. MELANOPLUS ALASKANUS, new species. 

 (Plate XII, fig. 1.) 



Slightly above the medium size, ferrugiueo-fuscous with testaceous 

 markings. Head pale castaneous, heavily marked above, at least in 

 the male, with black, especially along the margins of the eyes and in a 

 median stripe, besides a broad postocular band; vertex gently tumid, 



