ENTOMOLOGY 107 



centagc of fruit destroyed is very large; on some bogs the amount 

 reaches almost or quite one-half the entire crop. 



The katydids when mature are green, grasshopper-like insects, 

 with very long antenna?, or feelers, and long slender hind legs. 

 The fore wings are also green and are narrow, a little thickened, 

 not used in flight. The hind wings are decidedly longer, much 

 broader, very much thinner, almost transparent, and longitudi- 

 nally folded under the fore wings when at rest. Fully expanded, 

 these wings measure from 2 to 2 l /2 inches between tips, and the 

 body is about 1 1 A inches in length. In the male there is a little 

 triangular area at the base of the fore wings where they overlap, 

 and where a few ridge-like veins form a musical instrument by 

 means of which they produce their chirping song or call. In the 

 female this structure is absent, but we find at the end of the abdo- 

 men a broad scimitar or sickle-shaped ovipositor, by means of which 

 the eggs are laid. 



The young wingless katydids are found around and at the 

 edges of the bogs about the middle of June, but do not mature 

 until early in the following August. Not until they reach the 

 pupal stage, after the middle of July, does the berry-feeding habit 

 become developed, but from that time until the fruit is picked their 

 fondness for this kind of food increases, and the insects themselves 

 increase in number on the 'bogs. The first eggs are laid about the 

 middle of September and the laying continues until about the 

 same period in October. By that time the insects have disappeared 

 and nothing more is seen of them until June of the following 

 year. The eggs are laid chiefly in two kinds of grasses, locally 

 known as deer grass and double-seeded millet. 



Occasionally eggs are laid on other grasses or plants, but never 

 on cranberry leaves. They are laid chiefly at night on the drier 

 parts of the bog, in the edges of the leaf between the upper and 

 the under surface, to the number of from, one to five in one blade ; 

 the single number is much the more usual. When deposited the 

 egg is very flat, almost three-sixteenths of an inch long, less than 

 half as wide, slightly kidney shaped and of a very light yellowish 

 brown color. The disk of the egg is closely and roughly marked 

 or netted without definite pattern. 



The character of the remedy to be adopted follows from the 

 egg-laying habits of the species. Allow none of the host grasses 

 to maintain themselves on the bogs and burn over the dams during 

 the winter while the bogs are flowed. From the fact that the very 

 young katydids are never found on flowed bogs except at the edges 

 joining the upland or at the base of the dams, it may be fairly in- 

 ferred that the eggs do not survive the winter when kept completely 

 submerged, so that destruction of the grasses above the water lino 

 might answer. It would be safer, however, to have the grasses out ; 

 they have no place on the bogs anyway. 



For burning the grasses and other host plants on the dams 

 some one of the gasoline torches now on the market may be used. 

 They give a very intense heat and lick up leaves and plants with 



