ADAPTATION FOR THE INDIVIDUAL 93 



Insects are so common that anyone, who cares to, 

 may easily verify what is here described. It will take 

 nothing but a clear observant eye and a little patience 

 to make out what is suggested. Each of our com- 

 mon insects has one of two clearly denned habits in 

 the matter of food. Either it eats solid food, which 

 must be made fine before it can be taken into the 

 mouth, or it feeds upon liquids. These liquids may 

 be easily accessible like the nectar of flowers, in which 

 case one sort of mouth will serve ; or they may be the 

 juices inside the tissues of animals and plants, when 

 an entirely different type of mouth must be employed 

 in their acquisition. Perhaps the most easily found 

 representative of the biting type of mouth, which 

 breaks up solid food, will be seen in the common 

 grasshopper. Doubtless each one of my readers has 

 at some time taken a grasshopper into his hand, and, 

 holding the tip of his finger against the insect's 

 mouth, has promised the creature its freedom on con- 

 dition that it disclosed its reprehensible habit of chew- 

 ing tobacco. The grasshopper surely complied, and I 

 trust the promiser was as good as his word. The 

 grasshopper's head is so placed that, while it is at the 

 front of its body, the mouth is directly on the under 

 side of its head, while the eyes are at the top of the 

 front of its face. Under these circumstances it can- 

 not see what is going into its mouth, and this makes 



