158 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



away. Thus ends the round; the beaten one rushes 

 off as quickly as he can, as if hurt, but soon pulls up, 

 and lowering his head, begins defiantly stridulating as 

 before. The other follows him up, shrills at and attacks 

 him again ; and you may see a dozen or twenty such 

 encounters between the same two in the course of half- 

 an-hour. Occasionally when the blow is struck they 

 grasp each other and fall together; and it is hardly 

 to be doubted that they not only kick, like French 

 wrestlers and bald-headed coots, but also make wicked 

 use of their powerful black teeth. Some of the fighters 

 I examined had lost a portion of one of the forelegs 

 one had lost portions of two and these had evi- 

 dently been bitten off. Perhaps they inflict even 

 worse injuries. Hearing two shrilling against each 

 other at a spot where there was a large clump of heath 

 between them, I dropped down close by to listen and 

 watch, when I discovered a third grasshopper sitting 

 midway between the others in the centre of the heath 

 bush. This one appeared more excited than the others, 

 keeping his wings violently agitated almost without 

 a pause, and yet not the faintest sound proceeded 

 from him. It proved on examination that one of his 

 stiff overwings had been bitten or torn off at the base, 

 so that he had but half of his sounding apparatus left, 

 and no music could his most passionate efforts ever 

 draw from it, and, silent, he was no more in the world 

 of green grasshoppers than a bird with a broken wing 

 in the world of birds. 



