298 Forty- SIXTH Report on the State Museum 



Some alarm was excited in portions of Columbia county by an early 

 appearance of multitudes of young " grasshoppers " while snow was yet 

 on the ground. It was feared that their abundance at this time 

 betokened an excessive multiplication as the season advanced. The 

 insect, from examples received, was ascertained to be the young of " the 

 green-striped locust," Chortophaga viridifcisciata (De Geer). A notice 

 of it and of its occasional winter appearances is contained in this report. 



As a possible addition to the faunal list of our drinking waters may 

 be named a species of Ephemera — one of the " day-flies." Several 

 examples of it were received in April from Professor G. C. Hodges, of 

 the Utica Academy, with the information that they had been taken 

 from a water-filter in Utica. From a notice contained in the Utica 

 Observer of April 25th, it appears that the filter was one that was con- 

 nected with a fountain on a lawn. The little orifices through which 

 the water escaped having become clogged, the cap was taken off, and, 

 on examination, a large accumulation of the May -fly larvae was 

 found. Two days thereafter the same trouble recurred, and with the 

 same results. Some of the larvae were sent to Washington for com" 

 parison, where they were identified as, in all probability, belonging to 

 the genus Ephemera, but as there were no named larvae of the family 

 Ephenieridce in the collections of the NationalMuseum, no more definite 

 determination could be made. \ 



Among other living forms which in previous years have come under 

 my observation as having been drawn from water-faucets in dwelling- 

 houses in Albany where their occurrence might have been inconvenient 

 if not dangerous, are examples of Gordius, or the so-called " hair- 

 snake," a blood leach of considerable size, and a specimen of the large 

 intestinal worm^ Ascaris liimhricoides with several inches in convoluted 

 form of its extruded ovaries crowded with its countless eggs (now in 

 the collection of the New York State Museum). 



