ALONG FOUR-FOOTED TRAILS 



ties these traveling plunderers select in which 

 to lay their eggs are in low places upon the 

 loose sandy soil. These eggs contain the un- 

 developed lives of countless millions of insects 

 with the power of crushing the farmers' hopes 

 and depriving them of their natural rights, the 

 products of the soil they till. By the close of 

 the following month the grasshoppers had fin- 

 ished their life history and those of them that 

 had escaped their many enemies died either from 

 mere exhaustion or the unfriendly frost. Many 

 of their lifeless bodies were found and eagerly 

 picked up by the few birds that remained and 

 the little mammals in the neighborhood. 



The following spring, during the month of 

 May, on a bright, warm morning, Ella noticed 

 the ground was covered with little red hoppers 

 and more seemed to be pushing their way up 

 through the ground everywhere. They were 

 queer little things, with four short legs and two 

 great long hind legs and very large oblong 

 eyes and a pair of horns, properly known as 

 antennae, growing out from the front of the 

 head between the eyes. In color they resem- 

 bled the reddish soil from whence they came. 



