GRASSHOPPERS IN GENERAL. 39 



This insect has very frequently multiplied in such numbers in 

 limited areas over its range as to do considerable injury to cultivated 

 crops growing upon low, moist ground ; and has even been known 

 very frequently to spread over higher and dryer lands adjoining these, 

 its customary haunts. It is one of the few species of locusts that has 

 thus far shown a tendency toward civilization. This it has done 

 readily, since its habits are in unison with the cultivation of the soil. 

 It is only since the settlement of the country where it originally 

 occurred that it has multiplied so as to become sufficiently numerous 

 to become a serious pest. 



The eggs are laid in cultivated grounds that are more or less com- 

 pact, preferably old roads, deserted fields, the edges of weed patches, 

 and well-grazed pastures adjoining weedy ravines. Egg laying begins 

 about the middle of August and continues into October, varying, of 

 course, according to latitude and climatic conditions. Usually, but 

 not always, only a single cluster of eggs is deposited by each female. 

 Frequently there were two, and in extreme cases perhaps even three, 

 of these clusters deposited by a single female.* 



ANATOMY. 



It is believed that a brief general discussion accompanied by fig- 

 ures of the Differential Locust, Melanoplus differ entialis, will be of 

 practical value. Such a treatise will enable the farmer to understand 

 more readily the direct action of the external and internal remedies 

 used. 



EXTERNAL ANATOMY. A word, in beginning, concerning skeletons. 

 These are of two kinds : skeletons within the body and surrounded by 

 muscles, and those without the body, having all muscles on the in- 

 terior. The skeletal structure of man comes under the first class ; 

 the rigid outer structure of insects under the second class. Every one 

 who has studied human physiology remembers, among the first topics, 

 "Uses of the Skeleton," and if he were permitted to use another's lan- 

 guage, instead of his own, he would say, in answer: "To protect the 

 delicate organs, to furnish attachment for the muscles, to give form to 

 the body, to furnish levers for the movements of the body." And, if 

 this same scholar was to take up comparative anatomy later, he would 

 find that the skeleton of the grasshopper serves identically the same 

 purposes as the human skeleton. The integral parts of the human 

 skeleton we call bones ; the separate pieces of the grasshopper skele- 

 ton we term sclerites; that constituent which gives bones their firm- 

 ness we commonly speak of as lime ; that which lends rigor to the 



* Brunei-, Report of Ent. to Neb. St. Bd. of Agr., 1896, pp. 120, 121. 



