11 CANNIBAL GRASSHOPPERS. 



seeming rumination, which many have considered an actual 

 chewing of the cud ; whereas it is opined by others, that, 

 instead of ruminating, like Mistress Coll} 7 , the Sieur Gryllus 

 thinks of nothing but of licking, like Miss Grimalkin, his 

 superb whiskers (otherwise antennae) and his paws, an ope- 

 ration performed, by the way, with a tongue not at all dis- 

 similar in shape to the unruly member boasted by ourselves. 

 Whether or not che\vers of the cud, grasshoppers are, de- 

 cidedly, croppers of the grass ; but we arc assured, on good 

 authority, that they now and then are nothing scrupulous in 

 the variation of such Brahininian fare, by taking, as a relish, 

 some innocent little insect of a kind differing from themselves; 

 still worse, that when made fellow-prisoners (hard pressed by 

 hunger or confinement) they have been known to commit the 

 cannibal enormity of devouring one another an example 

 being given wherein one of the gentler sex (which, by the 

 way, among insects is usually the fiercer) was the doer of the 

 deed. But, worst of all! --horror of horrors! we have it 

 on excellent evidence, how that a certain great green grass- 

 hopper (one of the sort just described) on being bottled up 

 together with his own leg (accidentally detached), did make a 

 hearty meal off that late portion of himself. The reverend 

 naturalist by whom this unnatural act is recorded, performed, 

 himself, what in some prejudiced opinions might appear a 

 crowning feat of horror. He followed the example of the 

 AcndopJiagij and pronounced, on experience, the large green 



