104 CUCKOO SPIT 



as an example of how Nature makes elaborate provision 

 for the comfort and security of her humblest children. 



After March winds and April showers have wrought 

 their office on the land, and the silent forces which 

 have been silently at work since the turn of the year 

 have clothed it with fresh verdure when the meadow 

 grass is deep and woodland herbage has risen to half 

 its height, there appears upon plants of many kinds 

 the little masses of white foam which we inelegantly 

 speak of as cuckoo spit, and bestow no more thought 

 thereon. Few of us pay the familiar object so much 

 attention as to inquire into its origin ; yet so delicate 

 and complex is the machinery employed in the produc- 

 tion of this froth, that half an hour may be spent to 

 less purpose than examining it. If the froth is brushed 

 off, there will be disclosed within it a little yellow 

 creature with a fat paunch, a pointed tail, and a blunt 

 head, measuring about one-eighth of an inch in length. 

 This is the larva of a diminutive member of the grass- 

 hopper family, destined, if it survives the risks of 

 childhood and adolescence, to become one of those 

 lively little brown insects known as jack- jumpers or 

 frog-hoppers. Entomologists, with what strikes the 

 unlearned as a defective sense of proportion, have 

 employed a Greek compound and a Latin adjective 

 to label this tiny creature tautologically as Apliro- 

 phora spumaria, which in plain English means ' the 

 foaming foam-producer.' 



The means whereby this larva produces a mass of 

 froth fifty times or more its own bulk, and the purpose 

 of the mass when produced, deserve attention. A lens 



