94 



AN ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 



Another feature peculiar to this family is the exserted, promi- 

 nent, blade-like ovipositor of the female, which indicates an es- 

 sentially different method of oviposition. This, in fact, exists, 

 for the eggs are mostly laid in plant tissue, — usually in the stems 

 of reeds and grasses, among which some forms abound, — some- 

 times in woody tissue ; rarely in leaves, the edges being split to 

 receive them ; and only occasionally are they laid externally. 

 Certain cricket-like species are exceptions, and oviposit in the 

 ground. 



The most prominent, from their large size, are the species 

 loosely termed "katydids," — insects which are familiar by their 

 song, but are not always personal acquaintances, because they 

 are most active and noisy in the evening, and prefer trees and 

 shrubs to more modest plants. The true ' ' katydid' ' is Cyr- 

 tophyllum concavum, much the heaviest in build of all our spe- 

 cies, with very broad concave wing-covers and an unusually 

 developed sound-producing structure. In fact, the entire fore- 

 wings are immense sounding-boards, enabling the insect to make 

 itself heard at great distances. It produces its characteristic note 

 three or four times in succession, with slight intervals only, bear- 

 ing thus a semblance to " Ka-ty-did" or " Ka-ty-did-n't :" oc- 

 casionally it merely rasps out ' ' Ka-ty. ' ' 



This species lays its ovate, slightly convex eggs into the twigs 

 or trunks of trees late in fall, and the young appear during the 

 early summer following. 



One of the most common of the large species, found over a 

 great part of the Northern United States, is the Micjvce7itrum 

 retiJiervis, replaced in the South by the allied M. lau7'ifoliu77i, 

 which lay their large eggs externally in regular rows on the edges 

 of leaves, on twigs, or on any sort of likely or unlikely place, — 

 e.g. , the pulley-strap of a sewing-machine. The Southern spe- 

 cies is the more common, and in Florida becomes injurious to 

 young orange-trees by eating the foliage. They can be kept in 

 check on such trees by collecting and destroying the eggs during 

 winter, by collecting the insects themselves, or by spraying the 

 foliage with one of the arsenites. 



The genus Scudderia contains smaller, narrower-winged spe- 

 cies, in which the tegmina are not expanded in the middle and 

 the ovipositor is curved sharply upward. They frequent shrubs 



