The Vegetarian Insects 



tomed themselves by degrees to this terrible 

 diet: they would perish at the first mouth- 

 ful, if they had not a specially constructed 

 stomach at their service. 



This exclusive taste for such or such a 

 vegetable, sometimes harmless and some- 

 times poisonous, has many exceptions. Some 

 vegetarian insects are omnivorous. The de- 

 structive Locust nibbles every green thing; 

 our common Grasshoppers eat the tips of any 

 sort of grass without distinction. Kept in 

 a cage to divert the children, the Field 

 Cricket feasts on a leaf of lettuce or endive, 

 new foodstuffs that help it to forget the 

 tough grasses of his meadows. 



In April, on the green banks by the road- 

 side, we meet with squads of an ugly, fat, 

 bronze-black creature, which, when we tease 

 it, plays the Tortoise, shrinking into a ball. 

 It walks heavily on six feeble legs, while the 

 end of the intestine, becoming a supplemen- 

 tary foot, acts as a lever and pushes it for- 

 ward. It is the larva of a large black Chry- 

 somela {Timarcha tenebricosa, Fab.), an un- 

 pleasant Beetle which, in self-defense, dis- 

 gorges an orange spittle. 



I amused myself last spring by following a 

 flock of these larvae to their grazing-grounds. 

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