310 KANSAS UNIVERSITY SCIENCE BULLETIN. 



of taxonomic characters; but my attempts at classifying the 

 specimens collected in Douglas and Harvey counties, Kansas, 

 in Chicago, 111., in Woods Hole, Mass., in the Santa Rita moun- 

 tains, Arizona, and in Tarpon, Tex., trying to follow the keys 

 given by Scudder, Blatchley, De Saussure and others, have led 

 me to believe that Lutz is right when he says : "Either we 

 simply name stages in a great continuous mass of variation and 

 call them species or there is but one species of Gryllus in east- 

 ern United States, and the names we give are not the names 

 of species at all, but simply inaccurate, shorthand expressions 

 for recording the approximate size, proportions and color of 

 individuals found." This applies to our common field crickets ; 

 and I do not think that it should be limited to the eastern Uni- 

 ted States, but should include the central portion as well. 



On a collecting trip to Tarpon, Tex., last summer, I found 

 a color variation which confirms this opinion that all these so- 

 called species grade into each other. On the low sandy islands 

 I found that the crickets were straw yellow. Most of them were 

 in the last or next to the last nymph stage. This was about 

 June 12. At first I thought they were the imported Gryllus 

 domesticus; but later collecting disclosed some with a few, and 

 some with many dark markings. A few of the adults taken 

 subsequently were quite black. These were under the same 

 boards or stones with the straw-colored ones, and were mating 

 with them ; and they probably came from the same mother. A 

 number of nymphs were brought to the laboratory at Law- 

 rence and raised to maturity. All of them turned much darker 

 and some became jet black. As far as I could see these black 

 ones could not be distinguished from our native species. 



One peculiarity of these crickets on the islands at Tarpon 

 offered an additional reason for thinking they were G. domes- 

 ticus, or a closely allied species ; i. e., the young nymphs varied 

 much in their stages of development, a peculiarity I had noticed 

 in the domestic species in the greenhouses in Chicago. This 

 fact must be due to the climatic conditions — both forms de- 

 veloping where there is a long-continued breeding season, with 

 even temperature. 



In the laboratory I found that these Texas forms mated 

 very readily with our Kansas forms, both the spring-maturing 

 and autumn-maturing broods. Some of the adults I brought 

 with me paired with some tardy spring forms and some of the 



