284 RAVAGES OF GRASS-HOPPERS. 



misdemeanours, while those of "the fly," 1 and "the wire- 

 worm," 2 and "the grub," 3 are trumpeted loudly forth, and 

 figure infamously in the "Newgate Calendar" of the indig- 

 nant farmer. Yet do we suspect, that where thou and thy 

 merry companions most abound, even in the meads of England, 

 the mouthfuls of the cow must lack moisture, and the crops of 

 hay lack weight ; and when we read of thy continental fellows 

 caught in hand-nets by the bushel, what must we think of the 

 amount of mischief committed, or likely to have been wrought, 

 by the combination of their jaws! But, however deep the 

 damage they effected, direful was the penalty they had to pay; 

 when boiled, and their green coats reddened, like those of 

 lobsters or of shrimps, they were served up, a friand repas, a 

 dainty dish, to porkers. 



The poet to the tree-hopper thus concludes : 



" To thee of all things upon earth, 

 Life is no longer than thy mirth ; 

 Happy insect ! happy, thou 

 Dost neither age nor winter know ; 

 But when thou'st drunk and danced and sung 

 Thy fill, the summer leaves among, 

 Sated with thy summer feast, 

 Thou retir'st to endless rest." 



This will do alike for the tree and the grass-hopper, since, with 

 both, a short life and a merry one is the allotted condition of 

 being, extended only, we believe, to a few weeks of summer or 

 early autumn. Neither they, their leaves, nor grass, nor 

 " flowers," are much exposed, therefore, to those " frosty 

 fingers " deprecated for the gryllus by the Cavalier Lovelace 

 (writer of our prefatory lines), who, with true cavalier philo- 

 sophy (only a variation on the Greek Epicurean), thus con- 

 cludes his address to the English grasshopper : 



" Poor verdant fool I and now green ice ; thy joys, 

 Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass, 



1 Aphides of the hop, so called. 2 Larva of the Click Beetle. 



3 Larva of the Cockchafer. 



