INTRODUCTION. 



if "a heavy shower had recently passed 

 over them, the soil being pitted with small 

 holes as if made by heavy rain drops. 

 From these eggs eventually emerge 

 little black wingless hoppers, at first 

 small and helpless and quite unlike 

 one's notion of a grasshopper or 

 locust (insects which have a close 

 family affinity the one to the other), 

 but rapidly developing by a series of 

 moults or casting of the skin into 

 the insects here depicted. Some 

 few days after hatching, the little 

 ' hoppers ' pack together and move 

 down into the cultivated lands in 

 well-ordered battalions and bri- 

 gades and divisions, in which 

 formation they spend the rest of 

 the wingless portion of their lives 

 devouring the crops : whilst that 

 gentlest, most incomprehensible and 

 fatalistic of men, the Indian ryot, 

 looks on with folded hands and 

 does nothing. 



5 



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