SERENADE OF THE KATYDIDS. 17 



corded 9 it to be a fact that the broad-winged 

 katydid is most commonly found about the 

 domiciles of man; i. e., in his orchards and the 

 shrubbery and shade trees of his yards, "being 

 seldom if ever heard in extensive wooded 

 tracts." In this I am mistaken. In a trip 

 along White River a fortnight ago they were 

 found to be so numerous in the dense wood's 

 along the stream as to be almost deafening when 

 in full chorus near our camps. Last night they 

 serenaded me by scores from the oaks and 

 maples here in the open woodland, a third of a 

 mile and more from any house. Their cymbals 

 lulled me into early slumber, and were the one 

 sound heard when about midnight I awakened. 

 Between two and three o'clock, however, they 

 were almost silent, a single individual clanging 

 forth at intervals of a minute or two, then sub- 

 siding, then breaking forth again. 



By six o'clock I am through breakfast, 

 through washing dishes. Donning an old pair 

 of rubber boots and taking my gun I start down 

 the valley of the brook that flows by the base 

 of the knoll on which my tent is pitched, down 

 through a lowland thicket, one of the wildest 

 bits of nature's woodland in the country here- 

 abouts. Sycamores, willows, cottonwoods, soft 

 maples, red haws, poison ivy, tall actinomeris 



9 Orthoptera of Indiana, 1903, p. 360. 

 2 B28 



