Part 6

These wing-cases have large veins. Lift up a wing-case and pull out a lower wing. It is folded very closely, in lengthwise plaits. Where these wings join Mr. Grasshopper’s body, you will find his drum-plate for making music. One kind of grasshopper has very short wing-covers. In that kind, both Mr. and Mrs. Grasshopper make music. There is also one grasshopper, a little, green fellow, that has no drum; he is silent.

The upper side of the grasshopper’s chest is shaped like a large, horny collar. The head is large, and has two big, glossy eyes. There is, also, a knob on the forehead. Between the eyes, are set the feelers. They are very long; even longer than all the body.

The mouth of the grasshopper is wide, and it has strong jaws. But they are not so strong as those of his cousin, the cricket.

Grasshoppers prefer vegetable food. They will sometimes eat animal food. When shut up in a box, they will fight, and the one which gets killed will be eaten by the victor.

A grasshopper which lost its leg while being put into a box, ate its leg. Like the other winged creatures, grasshoppers lose their legs easily, and do not seem to mind it.

If you could look inside the grasshopper’s body, you would see that he has a gizzard, much like that of a chicken. It is made of little bands set with fine teeth. These teeth chew up into a pulp the leaves which the grasshopper has eaten.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] See Nature Reader, No. 2, Lessons 1-4.

LESSON XVII.

THE LIFE OF THE OLD MAN OF THE MEADOW.

Many years ago, a great poet wrote a song to the grasshopper. The poet said the grasshopper was the happiest of living things. It did nothing but dance and sing. It ate fresh leaves, and drank cool dew. When the glad summer of its life was done, it died. It did not live to be sick, or hungry, or cold.

This poet called the grasshopper “the earth-born,” and said that it was man’s little brother.

Yes, the grasshopper is earth-born. The mother grasshopper makes, with the sword of which I told you, a hole in the ground. In that she lays her eggs, in a case made of something like glue. Then she closes up the hole, and the eggs lie all winter, safe in the ground.

In the spring, the larvæ hatch from the egg, and creep out of the ground. They are very small, but shaped much like the parent, only they have no wings. They molt, or change their skins several times.

At first, the little ones are all alike, but after several changes of skin, the larvæ become pupæ. Then you can see the coming wings under a little sheath. You can also see Mrs. Grasshopper’s sword growing.

About six or eight weeks, after hatching, the final change is made. The perfect insect comes out of its last-shed skin. It has now two pairs of wings. Mr. Grasshopper plays on his new drum, and Mrs. Grasshopper marches about with her new sword.

The young grasshoppers are very greedy while larvæ and pupæ. They eat all the time. When they are grown, they do not give all their time to eating. Mr. Grasshopper must sing, and he does not do this while either flying or eating.

He stands quite still, fixes himself firmly by his fore-feet, and presses his body downward. There is a little quiver through all his body as long as the sound lasts.

The people of Italy call him “the screamer,” or “the squealer,” from his shrill noise.

The grasshopper has a very odd habit. After he has eaten for a long time, he sits quite still. He looks as if he were doing some serious thinking. Sometimes when he sits in this way, he moves his mouth as if chewing. From this action, people used to think that he chewed the cud, as cows and sheep do.

But he does not chew the cud. If you watch him well, in these silent times, you will see him gravely licking his long feelers, and his lips. He seems to be cleaning them.

To do this, he runs out a long, limber tongue, shaped much like yours. You remember that the ants have this habit of cleaning and dressing themselves, after eating.[14]

The great, green grasshopper, which lives on the trees, has wings of a gray-green. He has a little bronze, or russet color, on his feet, and on the under part of his body. The rest of his body is a fine leaf-green.

The color in the grasshopper does not seem to be laid on the surface of his coat, as on that of the beetle. It is not put on in plumes and scales, as the butterfly has it. But it is dyed through and through the wings and body.

The wing-cases of the grasshopper, and the rings of the body, are not hard, and like horn or shell, as in the beetle tribe. They are of a tough skin, and are dyed with the color.

Let us have a look at some of these fine fellows. Although the color of the great, green grasshopper is so gay, it will be hard to find him. His coat is just the tint of the leaves he likes to live among. You can scarcely see him even if you look straight at him.

You will find in the grass a smaller, lighter-green hopper that is very easily caught, because in his hurry to get away he flies right up in your face, when he hears you coming.

The grasshoppers are a very timid family, and are very sensitive to sound. Some say that their long feelers serve them for ears. But that is not true.

The garden grasshopper has very small wings. Its color is brownish gray. It likes to live in the garden walls or under the leaves in the borders. Both Mr. and Mrs. Grasshopper sing in this garden family. They keep up fine music for those who like to hear them, as one answers the song of the other.

I think we most of us like the cry of the grasshopper. It brings to our mind the warm, dry, sunny days, the time of flowers.

Out in the meadow you will find our Old Man, the common great, gray hopper. As the great, green one in the trees is hidden by his color, so is the great, gray one hidden in the grass. His coat is the hue of the half-dry grass, with little tinges of green along it.

He seems a very plain insect at first. But watch him and notice the light red and yellowish bands on his legs. He has spots of soot color on his wing cases. When he spreads his wide wings, note the brown and yellow stripes. He is fine enough after all.

In the woods, among the pine and fir trees, you will find a light-green, small, slim grasshopper a deal like the garden singer.

There is a very handsome, large grasshopper called the wart-biter. The boys in Sweden give him this name, because they think he can cure warts. They think that if he bites a wart, and puts some dark brown juice on it, the wart will go away.

The wart-biter is nearly two inches long. It is a green-gray with reddish legs and feet. It lays its eggs in little balls in the earth.

In South America there are very large and splendid grasshoppers. Their wings are so gay that when they fly they look much like butterflies. The wings, in flight, cover most of the body.

But when you see the large, long legs stretched out behind, and the very long feelers waving to the tips of the wings, you will know that this is a grasshopper. All this brown and black and crimson splendor is the Old Man of the Meadow, with a very fine coat.

The grasshopper is not migratory. It does not change its home. It dies near where it was born. Frost and cold kill it. It does not outlive the winter, as butterflies, bees, and wasps do.

Grasshoppers appear in great numbers, but they do not go in swarms as locusts do.

Each grasshopper lives alone. He does nothing for his neighbor, and his neighbor does nothing for him.

When grasshoppers are numerous they damage the grass and the young crops.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] See Nature Reader, No. 2. Lessons on Ants.

LESSON XVIII.

THE ROBBER COUSIN.

The Old Man of the Meadow is, in his way, like a quiet country gentleman. He roams about the fields, and likes to sing, and is fond of moonlight. He likes the shade, and the cool, still places under the green herbs.

He has a fierce cousin, who is a great robber, a kind of land pirate. His name is _locust_.

I asked a class of boys, “What is a locust?” One said: “It is a great, big grasshopper.”

Another said: “It is a greedy grasshopper that eats everything.”

A third said: “A locust is a grasshopper that travels in swarms.”

Now these were pretty good answers. Each had some truth in it. A locust is _not_ a grasshopper. But it is much like a grasshopper. It is his very near relative.

The locust is not always larger than the grasshopper. The great green, or the wart-biter grasshopper, is larger than the Rocky Mountain locust. That locust is called “the hateful,” because he does so much harm.

The locust is generally larger than the grasshopper, and one very big locust is much larger than any grasshopper that ever was known. And, too, the locust is much more greedy.

The locust destroys all plants that come in its way. It will eat the bark off the trees.

Locusts live and move in swarms. Instead of living and dying in the places where they were born, they are given to travel. They migrate like the birds you will read of in this book.

It is not quite surely known what is the motive for their journeys. Probably it is to get food. The locust is the child of hot lands. His first home was, no doubt, in the great sandy plains of Asia. He is very common in Africa. In Europe and the eastern part of the United States he is not very common. In the Western States he has done much damage.

If you take up a locust to examine, you will at once notice that his feelers are much shorter than those of the grasshopper. Mrs. Locust also is without the sword for placing her eggs. She lays them in the earth in long tubes.

The front of the locust’s head is harder and thicker than the grasshoppers. The hind legs are also much thicker and stronger than even the big strong ones of the grasshopper.

The locust’s coat is of light brown or sand color. There is a delicate green tinge on the wings. The breast has a soft vest of down. The legs are often striped in bands of brown and yellow.

The locust does not make his music as the grasshopper does. When he wishes to sing, Mr. Locust stands on his two front pairs of legs. Then he lifts his hind legs, and draws them one by one, or both together, over his wings.

The inner side of the hind legs has rough file-like edges. The wings have thick veins, which stand like cords above the wing surface.

The file parts of the legs rub on these cords, and produce the sound. The sound takes different tones, as one or both legs are used at a time in making it. Sometimes the sound is very loud, sometimes it is very low.

In the latter part of the summer, Mrs. Locust lays her eggs, fifty or one hundred together, in a tube hidden in the earth. In places where locusts do much harm, rewards are given for baskets full of these tubes. Many boys make a living by digging them from the earth, and selling them to be destroyed.

For you must know that locusts being very greedy, and very numerous, do much harm. They move quickly, and in great swarms. Though they live in swarms they have no queen as the bees have, and they do no work as bees and ants do.

Probably there is no living thing seen in such numbers as the locusts. We can scarcely believe or understand what we are told about the multitudes of these insects which appear in the East.

They fill the sky like a great cloud, so that the day is darkened. When they see a green place, they settle to feed. In a few minutes the green is all gone. The place is as brown and bare as if a fire had swept over it.

People hear with terror that the locusts are coming. They know the crops will be eaten up. Then food will be scarce, and the people will be poor.

If by chance a swarm is destroyed by other means than by fire, all the air for miles will be filled with the bad smell of the decaying bodies.

The only good that poor people can get from the locusts is by eating them. They pull off the wings, and legs, and dry the bodies. They eat them fried in oil and salt, or ground into meal, after roasting.

The locusts cannot fly against the wind. They go with the wind. It brings them, and if it changes, it sweeps them away. Sometimes the wind drives them out to sea. If they become too weary to fly, they drop into the waves and are drowned. This often happens. Then the water washes their bodies ashore. The coast of Africa has been found covered thick with them, for the space of fifty miles.

But they do not always drop into the sea. They are very strong on the wing. A great swarm of locusts was met by a ship, twelve hundred miles from shore. They surrounded the ship, and hid the sun.

As their flight is so strong, locusts can go from one country to another. They pass from Africa to the south of Europe. They go from the mainland to the islands.

Usually the locusts fly during the day, while the air is hot and dry. Late in the day they settle to feed, and where they stop they stay until all green things are eaten up. Of course they do not feed when on the wing. They run along the ground to eat.

People try many ways of killing locusts. Sometimes deep trenches are cut, and filled with water, so that the young unwinged locusts, as they run along the ground, will fall in and be drowned. But the locusts are in such numbers that the drowned ones soon fill the trenches. The others run safely over the dead bodies.

Sometimes great fires are lit across their path. Then the hordes of locusts crowd on, and at last, the fires are put out by the burned bodies. After that, the others pass on unhurt.

You must know that the young locust is quite as greedy, and as great a terror as his parents. In the larval and pupal states, they migrate as well as when they have wings. They seem born to eat and to travel. At this stage they go by walking. They march in a solid column like soldiers. They move straight on, nothing turning them aside. Is a house in the way? Over it and into it they go. You know some ants move in swarms in this way.[15]

The locust, being larger, more numerous, and more greedy than the ants, do much harm. If they find a town in their path, through it they go. Countless numbers may be killed, but there are countless numbers to follow. Is a river in the way? Into it they tumble, and when enough dead bodies lie on the water to make a raft, the other locusts pass safely over.

One great trouble about the locust is, that when a full-grown swarm passes through a place the ground is left full of eggs. The next year these hatch, and the larvæ and pupæ eat up all that has grown since their parents ravaged the land.

Famines of two or three years duration have been caused in this way. You will not wonder at the strength of locusts and the amount of food they need, when I tell you that one kind is quite a foot broad from tip to tip of the wings.

The great foreign locusts are very splendid to look at. They are dressed like soldiers in crimson and blue. Their fierce eyes shine, and the rush of their wings makes a sound like the coming of an army.

Did I not give this locust a good name, when I called him the robber cousin?

FOOTNOTES:

[15] See Nature Reader, No. 2. Lessons on Ants.

LESSON XIX.

THE MERRY COUSINS.

You have heard about the robber cousin of the Old Man of the Meadow. Now you shall hear about a very happy and harmless little cousin. Here he is!

Did you ever meet him in your walks? Did he ever come creeping out of a hole in the wall, or from a chink in the bricks in the hearth, and sit down by you before the fire?

Did you notice how he waved his long feelers gently in the heat, and seemed to bask in the glow as pussy does? If you were very still, perhaps all at once he burst into a shrill, gay little song.

Did you notice what a shining, dark-brown coat he had? Did you see that his tail had two long, stiff hairs, or bristles, spread out from each other? Did you think that they were like the long tail hairs of the bright and dainty May-fly?[16]

When you saw all this did you know your little friend well? Did you call him by his name, “How are you, Mr. Cricket”?

Ah, the cricket is a right-jolly little fellow; let us take a good look at him.

There are three kinds of crickets which we shall talk about. The house cricket, the field cricket, the mole cricket.

The body of the cricket is not so slender as that of the grasshopper, it is short and thick. It is much the shape of the first joint of your thumb. The color is a dark, glossy brown, sometimes almost black.

The feelers are very long, longer than the whole body. The eyes are large and round. The under wings are very large, much larger than the wing-cases. When they are folded up, they reach out beyond the covers and the body, in a long needle-like roll. It looks as if Mr. Cricket were carrying home something under his arm.

Near where the wing cover joins his body, Mr. Cricket has a little, thin drum-head for his music. He is very fond of making a noise. The French call him “Cri-cri”[17] from the sound he makes. We call him “cricket” for the same reason.

The cricket has strong jaws, sharp teeth, and a thick round tongue. His feet are not broad and thick, like the grasshopper’s. He does not run up plants as the grasshopper does. The cricket runs about the ground. He has sharp, thin feet. Sometimes they have stiff hairs on them.

As he runs about the ground, his long feelers warn him of any danger in front. What do you think he has to tell him of danger behind? He has that pair of long, stiff tail hairs, which look so much like feelers.

Mrs. Cricket does not sing. It is Mr. Cricket that makes all the noise. How does he make it? He has three strong veins under his left wing cover. The largest of these is rough, like a file. This vein he uses as a man uses the bow of a violin.

When the rough vein is drawn across the right wing cover, all the cover trembles, or quivers, and gives out a sound, as when the bow is drawn over the strings of a violin.

The field cricket will sing all day. The house and mole crickets sing only at night.

Field crickets and house crickets are very much alike. The field cricket is darker than the house cricket. He is also noisy by day. In the winter he creeps into the earth and is torpid, unless the early cold kills him.

I think house crickets are field crickets that have taken to living in doors. So, in course of time, they have changed a little. But they were all field crickets once.

Crickets are fond of moisture. They are thirsty creatures. They will drink any liquid left in their way. They drink water, milk, soup, tea, beer, vinegar, yeast. I have known them to come to my ink bottle to try to drink the ink! But that killed them!

Crickets eat vegetables. They like potato. They are greedy, and will eat whatever is in their way. They eat bread crumbs, soft grease, and are very fond of meat. They catch and eat small insects. They eat leather. Also they will eat woollen cloth, stockings, clothes.

Once our cook laid upon the grass a large piece of woollen blanket, on which she had spilled some bread sponge. She left it there thirty-six hours. When she went for it, the crickets had eaten nearly all of it. It was so full of holes it was like a net. There were more holes than there was blanket.

Crickets do not like to change their homes. They prefer to stay near where they were born. If you carry them away they will use their big wings to get home. Unless they fly to move from home to home, they do not use their big wings very much. They walk, or hop.

The poets and story-tellers are very fond of crickets. Many people think it is lucky to have them sing in the hearth. But there is no luck about it. It is very pleasant and cheery to hear them sing.

In hot weather the house cricket sometimes goes into the garden to live. In October he comes in, and finds a home in the house-wall. He likes new houses where the mortar is not too hard for him to pull some of it out and make his little home. He chooses the kitchen and other well-warmed rooms to live in.

If the house is shut up and without fires for some days the cricket becomes torpid. What do you suppose these little fellows did before they found men to build houses for them?

In houses they keep quiet all day. They are timid things. Perhaps they sleep. At night they come out. One wise old man who wrote about crickets said that the tiny, new crickets came out on the hearth-stone by hundreds. They were about the size of fleas. He found all sizes at the same time. So he thought that they hatch at any time if they live in a warm place.

The field cricket makes his house in the earth. He seeks a hot, sunny spot. Then he digs out a hole with his strong jaws. This hole is often from six to twelve inches deep.

The cricket is very timid and runs into his hole if any one comes by. But if he is not afraid, he sits in the door of his house to catch insects that come near. He also eats leaves and grass, that grow about his door.

Little French children fish for crickets by tying an ant to a thread and dropping it into the hole. You can also make Mr. Cricket come out, by poking a blade of grass into his hole. He runs up to see what is the matter.

Down in the bottom of the hole, Mrs. Cricket lays her eggs. They are fastened to each other, and to the ground by a kind of glue. She lays about three hundred eggs each year. She does not put them all in one place.

As soon as the larvæ come out of the eggs, they run up to the top of the ground. Each one then begins to dig a new burrow. Now and then they get tired of a burrow, and go off to make a new one.

The little crickets in the larva and pupa state look much like the grown ones, only they have no wings. When they are about half-grown, they hop about, and look, and act, much like tiny toads. If the crickets come out of the egg in July, they will reach the perfect state the next May.

When they are full grown, they have wings, and can play a tune. They like that. They sit in their doors and sing.

In Spain, the people like the cricket’s song so much that they keep crickets in little cages, to sing for them. If they have plenty to eat and drink, they will sing and be happy.

Each cricket will need a cage all for himself. Two crickets shut up together will fight, until one is killed. Crickets always live alone.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] See Nature Reader, No. 2. “Child of an Hour.”

[17] Pronounced _cree-cree_.

LESSON XX.

A QUEER CRICKET.

When you are out in the woods, you may find a very small, brown cricket, in the moist places at the roots of trees. That is the wood cricket.

The most curious of all the crickets is the mole cricket. The mole cricket is the stoutest and largest of all the cricket family. He takes his name from the little furry, mouse-like animal that burrows in the ground,--the mole.

The mole cricket is something like the mole in shape, and in the shape of its front feet. It is very like the mole in its ways.

Mole crickets in the larva and pupa state are like their parents in looks and habits. They lack only the wings. The wings of mole crickets are short. They open and close them at each stroke when they fly. This makes them fly with a wave-like motion. Now they go up, now they drop down.

The mole cricket sings only at night. It does not make such loud music as the field cricket.

The most curious thing about the mole cricket is its front feet. They are broad and short, and have toes. They look like a mole’s front feet. They also look like the glove, or hand part, of a little suit of armor.

These hands are made for digging. The mole cricket burrows along under the ground as a mole does. Have you seen the long, low ridge of earth the mole makes in field or garden? The mole cricket’s furrow is like that, only much smaller.

The mole cricket eats the roots of vegetables, as he goes along under ground. He is fond of peas, beans, and beets. He will eat the roots of flowers, also. He is a plague in a garden. He likes, also, to live near a stream or canal. He is very fond of damp places.