MORSE: ORTIIOPTERA OF NEW ENGLAND. 353 
wooded areas, these colonies persisting for many years. P'or a 
long time a thriving colony maintained itself on the college 
grounds at Wellesley, but the wholesale application of poison 
sprays to combat the gipsy moth finally destroyed the Katydids. 
Most of the colonies which I have noted have been located in 
oak or mixed woods, but I have found them also in elm and apple 
trees near houses. Owing to its retiring habits by day, and usual 
preference for the higher limbs of trees, it is seldom seen, though 
its raucous cries are known to nearly everyone living in southern 
New England. These are heard in September and October, the 
last singers persisting with increasing feebleness, until killed by 
heav>' frosts. 
The eggs are said by Harris to be slate-colored, rather more 
than one-eighth of an inch in length, resembling tiny oval bivalve 
shells. "The insect lays them in two contiguous rows along the 
surface of a twig, the bark of which is previously shaved off or 
made rough with her piercer. Each row consists of 8 or 9 eggs 
placed somewhat obliquely, and overlapping each other a little, 
and they are fastened to the twig with a gummy substance. 
In hatching the egg sphts open at one end, and the young insect 
creeps through the cleft." 
The Katydid is locally plentiful throughout Connecticut and 
in the warmer parts of Massachusetts. Extralimitallj^ the species 
is found in most of the States east of the Great Plains. 
THE CONE-HEADED GR.\SSHOPPERS— NEOCONOCEPHALUS. 
These are large, extremely long-bodied Grasshoppers with 
conical heads, short weak legs, and long, straight or slightly 
curved sword-like ovipositors. They attract attention at once 
by their bizarre appearance, due largely to their exceedingly 
elongate form, which, combined with their delicate coloring is 
decidedly protective, living as they do among the stems of coarse 
grasses. The color is prevailingly a soft green, varied with small 
amounts of black, pink, and purple, but a brown coloration 
replaces the usual green in varying numbers of individuals in 
nearly every species. 
They are sluggish insects with feeble leaping powers and seldom 
fly far, usually seeking escape from danger by plunging downward 
and hiding themselves in the maze of stems and leaves at the 
