A STRANGE STORY OF A GRASSHOPPER 199 
paper. As I watched his strange antics, I sud- 
denly discovered that he had become a veritable 
phantom of his former self; that I could actually 
read the newspaper text through his body. Exam- 
ination now revealed the mystery. I could easily 
see every nook and cranny of the grasshopper's 
interior, so glassy were the walls of the body, and 
I could now count about a dozen small, white 
larvae, which were now full grown, and were crawl- 
ing about within through head, thorax, body, and 
hind legs, cleaning its walls of every particle of 
remaining tissue, and causing the singular mo- 
tions described. Such a strange house -cleaning 
I never saw before. 
When the "Quaker" locust was captured it 
showed not the slightest sign of any such goings- 
on within its being. The final voracity of the 
larvae was swift and terrible. And what an as- 
tonishing instinct is that which should teach 
these parasites to avoid the vitals of their insect 
host until the last moments of their own final, 
complete growth ! The entire space of time from 
the activity of the grasshopper to the empty, 
transparent phantom was less than thirty minutes. 
I placed the unfortunate victim in a small, close 
box. Next morning he presented nothing but a 
clean, glassy shell, now more glassy than before, 
empty of every vestige of organic matter, while 
scattered about on the bottom of the box lay fif- 
