CHAPTER IX 



THE COCKROACHES, CRICKETS, LOCUSTS, GRASS- 

 HOPPERS, AND KATYDIDS 



(Order Orthoptera) 



1 E do not shut up our singing insects in cages 

 as the Japanese do, and bring them into 

 the house to cheer or amuse us, but we do 

 enjoy them, and were our summer and 

 early fall days and nights to become sud- 

 denly silent of chirping and shrilling, we 

 should realize keenly how companionable 

 crickets and grasshoppers and katydids 

 had been for us. A wholesome blitheness 

 and vigor and ecstasy of living rings out 

 in the swift and steadfast song of most of 

 our field and wood insect singers, while 

 the cheeriness of the cricket on the hearth 

 is familiar poetry and proverb. 



Almost all this insect music comes from the members of one order, the 

 Orthoptera. Indeed there is but one famous insect maestro, the cicada (of the 

 order Hemiptera), which does not belong to the group of crickets, locusts, green 

 grasshoppers, and katydids. Besides being singers, too, the Orthoptera 

 are the characteristic leapers of the insect world; crickets and locusts easily 

 surpass the world's athletes for high jumping if the record takes into account 

 the comparative size of the athletes. And, curiously, the singing Orthoptera 

 are the leaping ones. Of the six families composing the order, three include 

 insects which do not sing nor leap, while the other three are made up of 

 singers and leapers. 



As one tramps the roadways or dry pastures in summer and autumn, 

 the steady shrilling of the locusts on the ground, or their sharp "clacking" 

 as they spring into air, are most familiar sounds. When you ramble through 

 the uncut meadows and lush low grounds the still shriller singing of the 

 slender-bodied, thin-legged, meadow green grasshopper is heard, while 

 in the orchards and woods the snowy tree-crickets and broad-winged katydids 



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