190 PROC. ENT. SOC. WASH., VOL. 24, NO. 7-8, OCT.-NOV., 1922 



a living death under the tortures of parasitic maggots; the vic- 

 tim of insidious fungous diseases and the prey of "horse-hair 

 snakes " and other hideous enemies, from the moment it emerges 

 from the sheltering earth until the insect falls exhausted to it 

 again, after an existence of but a few short months! Not that 

 its fate evokes any particular feeling of pity in the bosom of the 

 entomologist, who knows the villain for a greedy robber, a bandit 

 and a glutton, and it is safe to say that a public reading of these 

 enthusiastic poets of the grasshopper, if given in Kansas or the 

 Dakotas, would elicit about the same amount and character of 

 response as would the singing of "The Battle of the Boyne" at 

 an Irish wake! In point of fact, the following lines of Moore 

 regarding the locust apply quite as well to the grasshopper: 



"Of all the beasts that ever were born, 

 Your locust most delights in corn; 

 And though his body be but small, 

 To fatten him takes the devil and all!" 



The Periwinkles and the Locusts. 



But the Acridiidae do not monopolize all the attention of the 

 poets, as other groups such as the Locustidae are noticed, al- 

 though they are not always recognized as such: 



" chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more. 

 He is an evening reveller, who makes 



His life an infancy and sings his fill." 



Byron. 



As the Acridiidae do not sing at night, the poet doubtless 

 alludes in these lines to the longhorned grasshoppers. Philip 

 Freneau, who has been called "the first national poet of Ameri- 

 ca, " undoubtedly was the first poet to celebrate the song of the 

 "katy-did": 



"In her suit of green arrayed, 

 Hear her singing in the shade 

 Caty-did, Caty-did, Caty-did!" 



It may be noticed that he spells the proper noun with a "C' 

 instead of a "K" and it seems more than likely that Freneau 

 was the first person to describe the song of the insect in these 

 syllables. Philip Freneau was born in 1770, graduated at 

 Princeton and was a college-mate of James Madison. He had 

 a checkered career, having been successively a privateersman, 

 a journalist and was appointed by President Jefferson as a trans- 

 lator for the Department of State. He was found dead in a 

 swamp, near Freehold, N. J., December 18, 1832. _ 



Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose poem on this insect is well 

 known, was led through his slight knowledge of entomology into 

 the following error: 



