THE GREY LOCUST 



believe it possible ; for the discarded sheath is absolutely 

 intact from end to end. Neither the terminal spurs nor 

 the double rows of spines do the slightest damage to the 

 delicate mould. The long-toothed saw leaves the delicate 

 sheath unbroken, although a puff of the breath is enough 

 to tear it ; the ferocious spurs slip out of it without 

 leaving so much as a scratch. 



I was far from expectmg such a result. Having the 

 spiny weapons of the legs in mind, I imagined that 

 those limbs would moult in scales and patches, or that 

 the sheathing would rub off like a dead scarf-skin. How 

 completely the reality surpassed my anticipations 1 



From the spurs and spines of the sheath, which is as 

 thin as the finest gold-beaters' skin, the spurs and spines 

 of the leg, which make it a most formidable weapon, 

 capable of cutting a piece of soft wood, emerge without 

 the slightest display of violence, without a hitch of any 

 kind ; and the empty skin remains in place. Still clinging 

 by its claws to the top of the wire cover, it is untorn, 

 unwrinkled, uncreased. Even the magnifying-glass fails 

 to show a trace of rough usage. Such as the skin was 

 before the cricket left it, so it is now. The legging of 

 dead skin remains in its smallest details the exact replica 

 of the living limb. 



If any one asked you to extract a saw from a scabbard 

 exactly moulded upon the steel, and to conduct the 

 operation without the slightest degree of tearing or 

 scratching, you would laugh at the flagrant impossi- 

 bility of the task. But life makes light of such 

 absurdities ; it has its methods of performing the im- 

 possible when such methods are required. The leg of 

 the locust affords us such an instance. 



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