Feb., '04] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 57 



An Unusual Injury by the Snowy Tree-cricket and 



Notes on its Feeding Habits. 



By C. O. Houghton, Newark, Del. 



On May 28th, 1903, there was brought to the Station for 

 examination the trunk of a young plum tree, something over 

 an inch in diameter, which contained a great many small, 

 round punctures scattered irregularly over nearly the entire 

 surface. Surrounding some of these punctures were irregular 

 depressed areas in the bark of considerable size and in some 

 cases a considerable amount of a gummy substance had exuded 

 from the wounds, entirely covering the apertures. 



I had seen nothing of the kind before, and an examination 

 of the literature at hand on the subject of insects affecting the 

 plum and other fruit trees threw no light upon the matter. 

 Examination of the punctures revealed in each the presence 

 of a small elongate egg, or egg-case, set in obliquely with one 

 end near the opening and wholly contained within the bark or 

 very nearly so. I was not familiar with the eggs and the 

 trunk was left upon a table in the laboratory- to await further 

 examination. While working in the laboratory that evening 

 I chanced to see, running quite rapidly about on the surface 

 of the bark, three orthopterous n^'mphs, slender-bodied, light 

 in color and about a half an inch in length, including the an- 

 tennae, which were considerably longer than the body. A 

 fourth one had not wholly freed itself from the egg-case, being 

 still held bj^ the antennae and one of its legs. This left no 

 doubt in my mind as to whether or not the others had emerged 

 from some of the other punctures in the bark. I at once came 

 to the conclusion that these active little fellows were the young 

 of a species of tree-cricket and began to look up the literature 

 on the subject. I found plenty of references to these insects 

 and their injuries, but nothing that was at all comparable with 

 the case in hand until I came to a bulletin by Dr. Hopkins,* 

 while connected with the West Virginia Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station, in which he gives some notes on Oecanthiis sp. 

 injuring branches of apple trees in old orchards. His experi- 

 ences, up to the point of finding the eggs, were very similar to 



* Bull. 50 W. Va. Agri. Expt. Station, p. 39 et seq. 



