80 FARM SPIES 



"Mrs. Emerson, do not open," came the reply 

 again, " because there is an awful big hopper-grass 

 on your window-shutter !" 



"Is that all?" said Mrs. Emerson, giving a big 

 sigh of relief ; and, bursting into a laugh, she re- 

 turned to her book. She could not get over the funny 

 side of it, and every little while during the afternoon 

 she would burst out laughing. When her boy John 

 came home and saw her he thought that she must 



be reading a 

 very funny 

 story. 



Willie and 



(After Wastourn, Minn. E X p. Sta.) Freddie Blake 



FIG. 42. "There is an awful big hopper- Were raised in 

 grass on your window-shutter." , -, . , -, /. 



the city and, of 



course, did not know much about grasshoppers 

 except what they had read in their story-books. 

 It was, therefore, not surprising that, when they 

 saw an unusually big one, they should be just a 

 little scared. 



Their father had been reared on the farm and knew 

 most of the common insects and other animals. 

 As a boy he had watched the bumblebee make her 

 home in an old mouse-nest ; he had seen the mud- 

 daubers build their mud-nests on the rafters in the 

 garrets ; and he had often noticed and watched the 

 squirming in manure heaps of maggots that made 



