816 UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



grasshoppers. Tliej weighed down every blade of grass, 

 and yet there was not a bird in sight to feed upon them. 

 These hoppers were not eating the grass. Had they 

 been, not a blade wonld have been left by sundown. I 

 chased a cloud of them into the widest portion of the 

 main meadow-ditch, but all, I think, swam safely across. 

 Not a frog or fish appeared to rise to the surface and 

 seize one. 



I pushed one well down the tall clay chimney of a 

 Diogenes crayfish, but it promptly returned, none the 

 worse for its subterranean journey. I placed another 

 in the dark den of a villainous -looking spider, but it 

 was simply ordered out, and not harmed. It would 

 seem as if these grasshoppers have no enemies, or was 

 it that all carnivorous creatures hereabouts were sur- 

 feited with their flesh ? 



Passing to another lower, weedier, wetter meadow, 

 the number of dragon-flies was the most marked feature 

 of the locality. A few were black as polished jet; oth- 

 ers gray, green, red, barred, and indefinitely varied. I 

 did not stop to count the varieties, but to learn wliy so 

 many gathered in so small a space. The cause proved 

 to be the decomposing remains of a calf, of which but 

 little beyond the bones were left. Not a square inch 

 of the exposed surfaces of these but was covered with 

 the flies. I knew they were carnivorous, but not to the 

 extent suggested by their hovering over nearly dry 

 bones. 



I was not ranch surprised, on a closer inspection of 

 the remains of the calf, to see half a dozen meadow- 

 mice scuttle off through the tall grass, for they are fonder 



