122 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



The IV diking -stick (Spectrum). 



The WALKING-STICKS, as this English name indicates, 

 are very fantastically formed. They are straight longi 

 tudinally, like the stem of a pipe, slender, and some of the 

 tropical species are more than a foot long. They are the 

 largest in proportions of the whole class, and, on account of 

 their length, may be considered the whales among insects. 



They somewhat resemble the Soothsayers, but their fore 

 legs are not sabre-like, nor adapted for catching insects. 

 They are not carnivorous but herbivorous, and are destitute 

 of wings ; and although they feed on plants, they are not in 

 jurious to vegetation, because they eat principally useless 

 weeds and the juices which issue from trees. Their an 

 tennas and legs arc very long, and always extended ; and as 

 their bodies are of a gray or yellowish and brown color, it 

 is often difficult to discover them, or to distinguish them 

 from the branch on which they stand, as the insect is often 

 motionless, with the legs extended in a straight line resem 

 bling the lateral twigs. 



In my excursions I have never met the Walking-stick 

 farther north than Maryland and Virginia, where I have 

 seen them in great quantities in the month of September, 

 either standing motionless on the twigs of trees or on the 

 rails of fences. At my approach they invariably took the 

 opposite side of the twig or rail, in order to evade observa 

 tion. The Hon. Prcscott Hall, of New York, however, re 

 cently informed me that he has observed them abundantly 

 at his summer residence in Newport, Ehode Island. 



The late Thomas Say held the same opinion that I did, 

 and believed this animal to-be only indigenous in the South 

 ern States, until he was corrected in this respect by Mr. 

 Charles Pickering, of Salem, Massachusetts, who informed 

 him that he had obtained one near that city. 



These insects are mostly all exotic, and, according to 



