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CHAPTER CXV. 



GRASSHOPPERS AND CRICKETS. 



paddy grasshoppers (Hieroglyphus Furcifer). This 

 acrid insect (Pharing) does very extensive damage 

 to the paddy crop also to young maize and Juar. It 

 attains full size when the paddy crop is nearly ripe for cutting 

 and when cracks in paddy c .elds are numerous. The females 

 can be seen laying eggs in the cracks in lumps of 40 or 50 

 about the end of November or beginning of December ; 5 or 6 

 of such lumps being deposited in different crevices by a single 

 female. Throughout the dry season nothing more is noticed 

 of the pest, and hidden in the crevices a certain proportion of 

 the eggs hatch at the beginning of the rainy season. Where 

 cold weather cultivation is practised, or where very heavy 

 showers of rain occur in April or May keeping paddy fields 

 submerged under water for some days before the hatching of 

 the eggs commences, very few get the chance of hatching. 

 When the grasshoppers are small in July and August they 

 hop about in the water of the paddy fields and live on 

 the young paddy plants, hardly noticed by cultivators. They 

 begin to be noticed in September, but it is only when the 

 plants are in ear in October and November, that the culti- 

 vators begin to recognise that the grasshoppers are doing 

 mischief. They are non-migratory. In one instance the 

 author noticed whole fields of paddy on one side of a road 

 in the district of Midnapore, ruined by this grasshopper, 

 while on the other side of the road scarcely any damage 

 could be noticed, .and while on one side myriads of grass- 

 hoppers were hopping about and flying, on the other side 

 there were only stray ones. 



1,229. Besides locusts and Hieroglyphus furcifer, there are 

 several other grasshoppers and crickets which are injurious to 



