CHAPTER VI 

 Orthoptera: the Grasshoppers, Crickets, and Cockroaches 



THE Grasshoppers, Crickets, Cockroaches, Walking 

 Sticks, and a few other species make up the order of straight- 

 winged insects called Orthoptera. Practically all of them 

 are injurious, or capable of becoming so. With the excep- 

 tion of the Tree Crickets and the Mantids few of them are 

 likely to be of great service to man, except possibly as a 

 source of food to poultry. 



The insects of this order are characterized by having 

 biting mouth parts, incomplete transformations, and four 

 wings the front pair usually being thickened, while the 

 hind pair are membranous and folded like a fan beneath 

 the front ones. This is a comparatively small group, but 

 one in which there are some very destructive species. In 

 America the Rocky Mountain Locust has done enormous 

 damage. In the Old World the locust plagues of both an- 

 cient and modern times were due to insects belonging to 

 this order. 



STRUCTURE OF A GRASSHOPPER 



If you examine a grasshopper carefully, one of the first 

 things you notice is that the body is divided into three im- 

 portant sections. At the front end is the head ; next to 

 this are two closely connected parts that bear the legs 

 and wings and together form the thorax ; next to the thorax 

 js a part divided into rings the abdomen. 



65 



