ECOLOGY — INTERPEETATION OF ENVmONMENT 413 



grouse locust that Is found the greatest ajmount of variabUity, 

 and in this species the individual color varieties interbreed 

 freely. According to experiments in breeding made by Nabours, 

 some of the color forms I have noted are hybrids. These 

 nine examples were found associated together on a light loam 

 in an open meadow, within an area of a few square yards, at 

 Kenilworth, Illinois, on July eleventh-. I have borrowed 

 this illustration from my published work entitled "Tettigidea of 

 North America," and also some of the facts given in this sketch. 



The jump of the grouse locusts is peculiar, in that it is quick 

 and inconspicuous, and it alights almost invariably on the 

 ground. The young of the larger Orthoptera usually alight on 

 grasses or stems of plants, dodging behind them for protection. 

 These insects often hibernate in the nymph and adult state 

 during the winter. Like the quaker and > green-striped locusts, 

 described in another chapter of this book, they appear very early 

 in the spring and at times all three may be found associated 

 together. Before the grouse locusts hibernate they have the 

 habit of secreting themselves under dead leaves, mosses, 

 grasses, old wood, logs, and bark at the base of trees, and in 

 the little crevices in the earth where they happen to be in the 

 late fall of the year. All of the species live on the ground. 



Those in this region belong to either pi the following four 

 genera: Nomotettix, Tetrix, Paratettix, and Tettigidea. They 

 usually live near water, either in boggy places, along the shores 

 of lakes, the banks of streams, swamps, in woods, or, more 

 rarely, on dry upland ground. They feed on vegetable mould, 

 or decomposing soil, and are quite fond of algse, hchens, mosses, 

 tender sprouting grasses, sedges, and germinating seeds of 

 plants found in damp situations. 



In the middle of May the first eggs are laid in the ground, 

 the female accomplishing this act by making a shallow burrow 

 with her ovipositor. The young larvae hatched from this 

 brood mature by fall, passing the following winter in the adult 

 state. The broods hatched in late June or early July are often 

 immature by the time winter arrives, and one finds them hiber- 

 nating in the pupa state. Thus it is that the grouse locusts 

 are about the earliest insects to be found in the spring, appear- 

 ing as early as March, and rarely, in winter when the sun's 



