216 



NA T URE STUDY RE VIE W 



[9:7— Oct., 1913 



People are surprised that I should spend my time hunting 

 walking sticks but when they see me after grasshoppers they look 

 wise and then ask if I am going fishing. I caught several hundred 

 red-legged grasshoppers during last summer and, needless to say 

 found out many new things concerning them, perhaps the most 

 interesting of which is the way they try to escape from an enemy. 

 They are in the habit of hanging on the tops of bushes or blades of 

 grass, by means of their short, hooked front legs. When disturbed 

 they drop either straight to the ground or by two or three relays, 

 swinging from one branch to another, until they land, and then hop 

 into the denser brush. If they are disturbed while in the grass 

 they dive straight downward and pushing their noses into the 

 blades where they are closely matted together, shove with their 

 powerful hind legs until they are entirely out of sight. Sometimes 

 they burrow for several inches in this manner and if not watched 

 carefully will be lost entirely. When a hand descends on a grass- 

 hopper he usually jumps, so when I pounced on one once and it 

 did not move I was a little surprised. Upon removing my hand 

 and looking a little closer I found that it was a female with the end 

 ot its abdomen inserted in the black soil, which had been trodden 

 down to a hard path. Coming back a few minutes later I found 

 the hopper gone and a hole left, smaller around than a pencil and 

 perhaps an inch deep, at the bottom of which was a cluster of small 

 eggs; these would have hatched the following spring if left urdis- 

 turbed. They were bunched together, oval-shaped and colored 



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Reproduced Nat. Size Fig. I. Katydid 



Photo by J. C. Evans, Syracuse High School 



