214 The Book of Bugs. 



that believed in the efficacy of prayer said to those that 

 didn't, " Aha! What did 1 tell you? " and the folks that 

 didn't said to those that did, " Oh, well, it was due to 

 natural causes, you can't deny that. It was merely a 

 coincidence." Some people are perfectly unreasonable. 



I was going to say a few words about one clever New 

 England farmer that couldn't bear to see the 'hoppers 

 eat up his hay and he get no good of it, so he rigged up 

 a sort of seine and hauled it over his meadows, gathering 

 in the creatures by the bushel. He boiled them and fed 

 them to the chickens, and they liked the stuff so well they 

 got too fat and wouldn't lay. Young turkeys are said 

 to get most of their living from locusts. The Arabs like 

 the things boiled in oil. And that reminds me of a story 

 I always like to tell. 



There is a congregation of nuns in the Episcopal 

 Church, a branch of what are called the ' Clewer Sis- 

 ters ' in England. The mother house in New York 

 City has a summer home up in the Catskills. A stranger 

 to the neighborhood, driving along the road with a 

 native, turned to look at the, to him, oddly attired women, 

 walking two-by-two in wimple, hood, and flowing veil. 



" What fer kind o' folks d'ye call them? " he asked. 



" Them? Why, them's the Sisters of St. John Baptist. 

 They live up the road a piece." 



" Get out! You can't string me that way. John the 

 Baptist's ben dead more'n a hundred years, him and his 

 hull connection." 



Speaking about eating locusts made me think of this. 



The Colorado potato-beetle was a pest as much feared 

 as the 'hoppers at one time, but nobody bothers much 

 about them now, even though they have left their first 

 love to an extent and will eat almost any kind of " garden 

 sass." About the only creature that cares to eat this in- 



