EATING INSECTS. 151 



very distinctly visible. I do not therefore doubt but 

 locusts chew the cud, as well as the animals just men- 

 tioned : indeed, I persuade myself that I have seen 

 this.'* Ramdohr, on the other hand, demonstrates 

 that this is altogether erroneous, | while we can rea- 

 dily point out the origin of the mistake, so far as it 

 regards observation. 



Like spiders, then, and many other insects, J locusts 

 and grasshoppers are very assiduous in cleaning their 

 limbs ; and we have seldom seen them long stationary 

 without doing something of this kind, their mandibles 

 being actively at work in mumbling their antenna- and 

 other organs, and biting off every film or particle of 

 dust adhering to them. To an ordinary observer 

 this action of the jaws inight readily suggest a resem- 

 blance to ruminating animals chewing the cud, par- 

 ticularly as the long slender antennae of some species 

 i^Jlcrida vbidissima, &.c), when thus operated upon, 

 may be overlooked, while the attention is wholly di- 

 rected to the motion of the mandibles. This it was, 

 we have no doubt, that led Swammerdam to imagine 

 he had actually seen a locust chewing the cud; though 

 it is not a little singular that, with his habits of accu- 

 rate and minute observation, he did not detect the 

 genuine fact, particularly as the limbs and feet, which 

 are large and obvious, are very frequently operated 

 upon, it being indispensable in these, as in all insects 

 which walk against gravity, to keep the suckers or 

 cushions of their feet free from all extraneous defile- 

 ment. It is, indeed, not a little interesting to a natu- 

 ralist to see, as we have frequently done, a large heavy 

 locust walking with ease up the glass pane of a win- 

 dow, and occasionally stopping to examine one or other 

 of its feet to try whether it is fit for duty, and going 



* Book of Nalnre, i, 94. t Anatomie der Insekten, 18. 

 t See Insect Arch. p. 368 ; and Ins. Transf. p. 357. 



