A STRANGE STORY OF A GRASSHOPPER 199 



paper. As I watched his strange antics, I sud- 

 denly discovered that he had become a veritable 

 phantom of his former self; that I could actually 

 read the newspaper text through his body. Exam- 

 ination now revealed the mystery. I could easily 

 see every nook and cranny of the grasshopper's 

 interior, so glassy were the walls of the body, and 

 I could now count about a dozen small, white 

 larvae, which were now full grown, and were crawl- 

 ing about within through head, thorax, body, and 

 hind legs, cleaning its walls of every particle of 

 remaining tissue, and causing the singular mo- 

 tions described. Such a strange house -cleaning 

 I never saw before. 



When the "Quaker" locust was captured it 

 showed not the slightest sign of any such goings- 

 on within its being. The final voracity of the 

 larvae was swift and terrible. And what an as- 

 tonishina^ instinct is that which should teach 

 these parasites to avoid the vitals of their insect 

 host until the last moments of their own final, 

 complete growth ! The entire space of time from 

 the activity of the grasshopper to the empty, 

 transparent phantom was less than thirty minutes. 

 I placed the unfortunate victim in a small, close 

 box. Next morning he presented nothing but a 

 clean, glassy shell, now more glassy than before, 

 empty of every vestige of organic matter, while 

 scattered about on the bottom of the box lay fif- 



