368 NATURE SKETCHES IN TEMPERATE AMERICA 



other times I came upon numbers about coarse grasses and 

 reeds in swampy meadows. Again, on August twenty-sixth, 

 mention is made in my notes of finding this species several 

 miles south of Chicago on an uncultivated sandy ridge. Here 

 the ground was scattered with a dwarf growth of burr-oak, 

 small hazel bushes, and many tall weeds. As I approached, 

 numbers of the leather-colored locusts flew up from the herbage 

 with a whirring sound of their wings, taking different courses 

 from my chosen path. These large locusts presented an inter- 

 esting picture in the air with their transparent yellowish-tinged 

 wings glimmering in the light. In an area of half an acre 

 there were as many as seventy-five to eighty individuals seen. 

 The males seemed to take fright more readily, and were the 

 first to arise to their wings. 



In this assemblage were a number of the allied species, the 

 rusty locust, Schistocerca rubiginosa. The two species inter- 

 mixed freely, and were found mating without distinction as 

 to the color forms. At the end of their long flights these locusts 

 often fall rather clumsily to the ground, where they remain 

 quietly, protected by reason of their harmonious body colors. 

 In one color form there is a conspicuous median yellow stripe on 

 the back along the length of the whole body, which is an excel- 

 lent aid to concealment when the locusts are on the ground. If 

 further molested, they often attempt concealment by crouching 

 among the grasses or other herbage, making it very difficult 

 to find them. 



In their headlong aerial flights these insects not infrequently 

 catch upon a weed with their feet before falling to the earth. 

 In this way they check the progress of their flight. McNeil 

 in "Psyche" has recorded finding a colony that established 

 themselves in a certain point near Colona, Henry County, 

 Illinois, which frequented a patch of Johnson grass. Sorghum 

 kalepense. That the habits of the leather-colored locusts are 

 quite changeable is shown from the observations of Blatchley, 

 who notes that in Indiana this species is abundant about the 

 marshy meadows, where it makes its home in the rank grasses, 

 weeds, and rushes which grow in such places. 



Finally, I find in my notes that I observed a large number 

 of these Orthoptera associated together near the shore of Lake 



