INSECTS 



while performing, and the breathing motions of the abdo- 

 men are very deep and rapid. The robust conehead is an 

 inhabitant of dry, sandy places along the Atlantic coast 

 from Massachusetts to Virginia and, according to Blatch- 

 ley, of similar places near the shores of Lake Michigan in 

 Indiana. The writer made its acquaintance in Con- 

 necticut on the sandy flats of the Quinnipiac Valley, north 

 of New Haven, where its shrill song may be heard on 

 summer nights from long distances. 



THE MEADOW GRASSHOPPERS 



These are trim, slim little grasshopperlike insects, active 

 by day, that live in moist meadows where the vegetation is 

 always fresh and juicy. They constitute the subfamily 

 Conocephalinae of the katydid family, having conical 



Fig. 29. The common meadow grasshopper, Orchelimum vulgare, a member of 

 the katydid family 



heads like the last group, but being mostly of smaller size. 

 There are numerous species of the meadow grasshoppers, 

 but most of them in the eastern part of the United States 

 belong to two genera known as Orchelimum and Conoceph- 

 alus. The most abundant and most widely distributed 

 member of the first is the common meadow grasshopper, 

 Orchelimum vulgare. A male is shown in Figure 19. He 

 is a little over an inch in length, with head rather large 

 for his size and with big eyes of a bright orange color. The 

 ground color of his body is greenish, but the top of the 

 head and the thoracic shield is occupied by a long tri- 

 angular dark-brown patch, while the stridulating area of 



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