Some data for the Natural History of Orange Co. N. Y. 227 



increases in size, keeps widening its hole, and working it 

 nearer to the surface, so that each locust has its opening 

 worked to the surface two or three weeks before leaving it. 

 In some suitable places and soils their holes are very near 

 each other, and the surface is perforated like a riddle. 



I have not transcribed my observations for this year, (1 826,) 

 It is an erroneous opinion that locusts appear only at stated 

 periods. That they have appeared in very large numbers, at 

 regular intervals of seventeen years, during the last eighty 

 five years — making five visits — is beyond all dispute : but, a 

 few locusts are heard to sing almost every year. On the 1 4th 

 of June, 1812, I heard one sing — on the 11th of June, 1913, 

 I heard several. 



It should have been mentioned in a former part of this pa- 

 per, that in clay land there appear to be more holes than in 

 any other soil — in loam not so many — in stony ground fewer 

 — and in morasses none. They breed mostly in woodlands, 

 none in old clear fields, except under hedges, single trees or 

 orchards. In case a piece of wood or brush land is cleared 

 the summer after a locust year, they will come out of it in as 

 #great numbers as if it were covered with wood and timber, 

 and the usual period of visitation had arrived. 



Date of the annual song of the Kitty Didet.* 



It is known that it is the male Kitty Didet that sings, (as it 

 is improperly called,) its love song to attract the females. 

 The noise is made by flat transparent plates, one on each 

 wing, near to the back, which are grated on each other with 

 some force and great rapidity. When they first sing, they 

 are only heard in the evenings and nights, but after the severe 

 white frosts in October, and the weather has become cold, 

 they sing only in the warm sunshiny days. They usually ap- 

 pear in the month of August, as will be seen by a record of 

 the last sixteen years. 



1809, they were first heard on the evening of Aug. 22, 



1810, '• « " " " 8, 



1811, « " « " " 8, 



* This insect was considered by Linnaeus and his followers as a Gryllus, but 

 since the division of that genus by Fabricius and others, it has been assigned to 

 the new genus Acheta, of which there are about twenty species, but the spe^ 

 cine name of our Kitty Didet, has not, I believe, been determined. 



