MORSE: ORTHOPTERA OF NEW ENGLAND. 325 
three or four millimetres to a centimetre in length, in color they 
were a ver>' pale yellowish green. 
"By the first of August they had begun to leave the timber and 
appear in the orchard and around the house. In the orchard they 
infested particularly one tree of early apples, devouring nearly 
all the leaves; on a single twig six inches in length I counted sixteen 
clustered together and they were equally numerous over the 
entire tree. 
"The woods had become forbidden ground to us; if one were 
sufficiently brave to start through them, the walking-sticks fell 
to the ground from every tree in such numbers as to sound like 
hail. . . . By mid-September the timber showed stretches a 
couple of hundred feet broad and half a mile long where the trees 
had been completely defohated. The walking-sticks began to 
cross the road to another piece of timber in which there had been 
almost none of the insects and every passing carriage or motor 
crushed them by hundreds. This extremely local character of 
the infestation was a curious feature. One piece of timber con- 
taining about 200 acres was almost wholly stripped, while a 
similar piece across the road was scarcely touched." 
The female Walking-stick lays about one hundred eggs, which are 
singularly seed-like in appearance, veritable tiny beans in aspect, 
long oval and more or less flattened in shape, black, with a 
whitish line on the side. " They are simply dropped loosely upon 
the ground from whatever height the female may happen to be, and, 
during the latter part of autumn where the insects are common, 
one hears a constant pattering, not unlike drops of rain, which 
results from the abundant dropping of these eggs, which in places 
lie so thick among and under the dead leaves that they may be 
scraped up in great quantities. . . . The eggs remain upon the 
ground all through the winter and hatch for the most part during 
the month of May. Some of them, however, continue hatching 
much later, so that all through the summer and even into the fall, 
young individuals may be found. The insect changes very little 
in appearance from birth to maturity except so far as color is 
concerned, and molts but twice. With age the green color gives 
way to various shades of gray and brown" (Riley). 
The Northern Walking-stick is said to be abundant in any given 
locality only every other year. This is due in part, it is believed, 
