THE LOCUST OR SHORT-HORNED GRASSHOPPER 343 



species. The descriptions are generalized except where reference 

 is made to species that are especially suited to illustrate particular 

 structures or activities. 



The Locust or Short-horned Grasshopper 



Occurrence and Distribution. — The locusts or short-horned 

 grasshoppers are typically inhabitants of dry fields and pastures, 

 in contrast with the green grasshoppers which live upon the damp 

 grass of meadows. As one follows the dusty roadway or tramps 

 across the upland pastures in summer and autumn, they spring 

 into the air. Their " shrilling " as they rest upon the ground and 

 the " clacking " of their wings in flight are characteristic sounds 

 of the noontide, just as the songs of their near relatives, the katy- 

 dids and crickets, are among the most familiar sounds of night. 

 As one American student of the insects puts it : 



We 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 sununer and early fall days and nights 

 to become suddenl}' 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 famihar in poetry and proverb. ^ 



Locusts are universally distributed on all the continents in all 

 cUmates where the insect hfe of open fields abounds. Some species, 

 like the common red-legged locust, Melanoplus femur-rubrum, 

 are local in their habitat, being confined for their entire life 

 cycle to a restricted locality. Others are migratory, like the 

 mountain locust, Melanoplus spretus, which formerly bred upon the 

 upland plateaus of the Rocky Mountains and in certain years 

 swarmed eastward for hundreds of miles to settle upon the Kansas 

 prairies. All crawl upon the grass of fields and similar vegetation, 

 leaping into the air by means of the posterior pair of legs and sus- 

 taining their flight according to the development of the wings. 

 In temperate climates the eggs of most species are laid in the 

 ground during late summer and autumn, hatching as the innu- 

 merable wingless hoppers that can be collected in the early spring 

 b}^ sweeping an insect net across the grass. 



1 Vernon L. Kellogg, "American Insects," p. 123. 



