TWO STRANGE GRASSHOPPERS 93 



halts for a moment, to recover from the effects of the journey. 

 Then, with renewed strength, it makes a last effort : it swells 

 the protrusion at the back of its head as far as it will go, and 

 bursts the sheath that has protected it so far. The creature 

 throws off its overall. 



Here, then, is the Decticus in his youthful shape, quite 

 pale still, but darker the next day, and a regular blackamoor 

 compared with the full-grown insect. As a prelude to the 

 ivory face of his riper age he wears a narrow white stripe 

 under his hinder thighs. 



Little Decticus, hatched before my eyes, life opens for 

 you very harshly ! Many of your relatives must die of 

 exhaustion before winning their freedom. In my tubes I 

 see numbers who, being stopped by a grain of sand, give up 

 the struggle half-way and become furred with a sort of silky 

 fluff. Mildew soon absorbs their poor little remains. And 

 when carried out without my help, their journey to the surface 

 must be even more dangerous, for the soil out of doors is coarse 

 and baked by the sun. 



The little white-striped nigger nibbles at the lettuce-leaf 

 I give him, and leaps about gaily in the cage where I have 

 housed him. I could easily rear him, but he would not teach 

 me much more. So I restore him to liberty. In return for 

 what he has taught me I give him the grass and the Locusts 

 in the garden. 



For he taught me that Grasshoppers, in order to leave 

 the ground where the eggs are laid, wear a temporary form 

 which keeps those too cumbrous parts, the long legs and 

 antennae, swathed together in a sheath. He taught me, too, 

 that this mummy-like creature, fit only to lengthen and 

 shorten itself a little, has for its means of travelling a hernia 

 in the neck, a throbbing blister an original piece of mechan- 

 ism which, when I first observed the Decticus, I had never 

 seen used as an aid to progression. 



