A STRANGE STORY OF A GRASSHOPPER 
I 9 7 
and illustrate a singular battle which I had short- 
ly before observed between a large red mutilla 
ant and a "Quaker." The mutilla I had captured 
at the time, and had preserved as a specimen. I 
needed only the grasshopper to complete my 
drawing. Directly in front of my city house a 
number of vacant grassy lots offered a favorite 
haunt for the insects I used to call it the 
Quaker camp-meeting ground and I started out 
to procure one. Having no net, I was soon con- 
vinced that I was greatly at a disadvantage. The 
thermometer was about 90, and, of course, the 
" Quakers," being in their element, had much the 
best, not to say the easiest, time of it. I at length 
gave up the chase, and was about leaving the 
field, when fortune favored me by the discovery of 
a clumsy specimen, which seemed unable to fly 
