232 EYE SPY 



zing harvest-fly a " bug ?" Rather will they per- 

 sist that he is a " locust," which he is not. He 

 should be called the cicada. The " grasshopper " 

 of the fields is the true locust, whose swarms of 

 certain species in the Orient have so often shut 

 out the sun, and whose voracious feeding has laid 

 waste whole square miles of vegetation in a single 

 night. 



But such a swarm of locusts as we read of in 

 Scripture, and frequently in the history of mod- 

 ern times and in our own country, would be com- 

 paratively tame and merely amusing affairs were 

 they composed of our so-called "locust" he of 

 the whizzing timbrel in the sultry August noon. 

 For this insect has no teeth, and could not bite a 

 blade of grass if it wanted to. And herein we 

 see one of the peculiarities which constitute him 

 a " bug," and which also includes in the same 

 company our woolly swarm upon the alder twigs. 

 In place of teeth these insects are supplied with 

 a beak for sucking the juices of plants. If we 

 carefully examine the dense snowy mass we find 

 it composed of small tufts closely crowded to- 

 gether, each tuft being borne upon the plump 

 body of a small insect whose beak is deeply sunk 

 into the tender bark. 



I have separated one of the little creatures, and 

 furnished his portrait as he appears when viewed 

 through a magnifying-glass, only the lower por- 



