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Long-horned Grasshoppers — Part 2

This insect, commonly known as the angular-winged katydid, is a common species throughout the more southern portions of the United States, extending as far north as New Jersey on the Atlantic Coast. This insect hibernates in the egg stage. The eggs are flattened, oval, of a slate-brown color, about four mm., in length, and are laid in a curious double overlapping row on twigs of trees and in other situations. In the south, where the insect has two generations annually they are even laid on the edges of leaves, in which case one row will be found on one side of the leaf and the other row on the other side. They are sometimes also laid in peculiar situations, as on the edge of a fence board, and the writer once received a batch from a western correspondent which was found on the edge of a freshly laundried collar which had laid for some time in a bureau drawer. Riley records oviposition on the edge of a piano cover and on a long piece of cord. The females begin to oviposit in the early fall and continue to lay at intervals until killed by frost. The surface of the twig is first roughened by the jaws and then the ovipositor is moved up and the eggs are laid one after another, the successive ones being pushed for a short distance under the edge of the one immediately preceding, the number varying from two to thirty in a bunch. Each female lays from 100 to 150 eggs. In the spring the egg splits along its top edge and the young katydid, very pale in color, emerges. In Missouri the skin is cast five times and the perfect insect appears from July to August, the songs being most commonly heard in the latter month. Mr. Scudder, who has studied the notes of crickets and grasshoppers from the musical standpoint, states that the day song of the katydid differs from the night song. In its northern range the insect is single brooded but in the far southern States there are two generations annually. The eggs of the angular-winged katydid are stung by the curious chalcidid parasite known as Eupelmus mirabilis Walsh, called by its describer the "back-rolling wonder" from the fact that the abdomen is frequently turned backwards and upwards until it nearly reaches the head, the hind legs being turned in the same direction so that the insect almost forms a ball.

This parasite, male and female, appears at the bottom of Fig. 226.