82 



APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY 



look like clouds in the sky. These migrating species are sometimes 

 spoken of as locusts. 



Grasshoppers are feeders on grass and vegetation in general and 

 are injurious, the amount of injury they cause varying with their- 

 abundance. Their antennae, shorter than the body, and their tarsi, 

 consisting of only three segments, quickly distinguish them from the 

 related family TettigoniidsB. The pronotum is extended backward 

 somewhat, and down on the sides of the prothorax almost to the base 

 of the fore legs. In the female there is a short, stout ovipositor com- 

 posed of four parts, and the rather narrow fore wings, usually somewhat 

 leathery in texture, cover the large, delicate hinder pair when these, 

 folded in plaits, are at rest above and along the sides of the body. 



Most grasshoppers lay their eggs in the ground, usually in the fall, 

 and these hatch the following spring. The female works its ovipositor 

 into the soil a short distance, then pushes apart its four pieces and 

 deposits its eggs in a cluster containing from twenty-five to perhaps 



1 1.,. ;,(!. Fig. 57. 



Fig. 56. — Two-striped Grasshopper {Melanoplus bivittalus Say) laying eggs. {Reduced 

 from U. S. D. A. Farm. Bidl. 747.) 



Fig. 57. — Sac, or "Egg-pod" of Grasshopper eggs in the ground. About natural 

 size. {Reduced from U. S. D. A. Farm. Bull. 747.) 



five times that number of eggs, covered by a fluid which hardens and forms 

 a sort of protecting case (Figs. 56 and 57). The young on hatching, 

 work their way out of the ground and feed, molting several times and 

 becoming adult after 2 or 3 months. 



Only a few of the kinds of grasshoppers found in the United States 

 are sufficiently migratory in their nature to deserve the name "locust." 

 During the period between 1860 and 1880, however, and to some extent 

 since, inhabitants of the states west of the Mississippi River have at 

 times suffered the entire, or almost entire loss of their crops by the 

 ravages of swarms of the Rocky Mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus 

 Thom.) which, breeding in immense numbers on the eastern slopes of 

 the Rocky Mountains, upon maturity migrated eastward for food, and 

 stripped everything where they alighted. Settlement of these breeding 

 grounds, and cultivation, destroying the eggs, has largely put an end to 

 these migratory flights, but occasionally grasshoppers occur in destruc- 



