56 INSECTS 



vegetation while still unfledged, and then migrated 

 yet further east to do destructive work as adults and 

 to perish gradually, in the egg stage, in the moist un- 

 suitable soil. No one who has not seen grasshoppers 

 in this western country can form any real idea of their 

 actual abundance, and their destructiveness has been 

 the theme of many a writer. They eat any green thing 

 if they must; but favor the low plants of field and 

 meadow so long as they last. 



Conditions now are much better than they were 

 and can never again be quite as bad. A large area of 

 what was at one time ideal breeding ground, is now 

 irrigated and under cultivation, and the enormous 

 belt of alfalfa and other crops now basing the foot- 

 hills, checks and takes up the migrating hordes that 

 occasionally start from the uncultivated areas. The 

 march of advancing cultivation spells the doom of 

 some of these grasshopper species, as it has that of 

 many another animal; but meanwhile the grass- 

 hopper is putting up a good fight and is still causing 

 trouble. 



While there is considerable variation in grasshopper 

 habits and life history, some of them laying their eggs 

 in soft or decaying wood tissue, there is little in the 

 character of the injury caused; it is always a direct 

 eating of the plant, rarely threatening its life, however 

 much it may be injured for agricultural purposes. 



The long-homed or meadow grasshoppers are most 

 abundant in the places shunned by the short-homed 

 species. They delight in moist meadows, in reedy 

 open swamps, and are abundant in the marshes along 

 the sea and lake coasts. They are usually of some shade 

 of green in color, and have a more or less well marked 

 blade-like ovipositor, by means of which they lay their 

 eggs in the stems or leaves of the grasses and other 



