Grasshopper 's, Crickets ', and Locusts. 241 

 Marvel too, among his meadows, is just as sympathetic : 



" Oh, what unusual heats are here 

 Which thus our sun-burn'd meadows fear ! 

 The grasshopper its pipe gives o'er, 

 And hamstring'd frogs can dance no more ; 

 But in the brook the green frog wades, 

 And grasshoppers seek out the shades ; 

 Only the snake, that kept within 

 Now glitters in its second skin." Marvel. 



Or the more naturalistic poets : 



" It is high noon, 



And scarce a chirping grasshopper is heard 

 Through the dumb mead. Distressful nature pants." Thomson- 



" Intense the viewless flood of heat descends 

 On hill and vale and wood and tangled brake, 

 And to the chirping grasshopper the broom 

 With crackling pod responds." Grahame. 



Granted, then, that it is a summer insect that it is in the 

 days of heat one hears it most loquacious how odd it is 

 that the fable should have survived that it " died in October " ! 

 It does not, of course, do anything of the kind, but simply 

 withdraws into its place and sleeps through the winter. As 

 every one knows, it is a rule of nature every winged insect 

 shall die within the year (the occasional individuals that 

 survive the twelvemonth only proving the rule), for the stage 

 of wings is the last third of the creature's life. 



After all, it would be very absurd if we did not recognise 

 among ourselves the stages of childhood, youth, middle age, 

 and old age, which together cover the span of our " three 

 score years and ten." An insect's stages proceed in a far 

 smaller compass, and the winged one is the last. It is 

 really the old age of the caterpillar or grub. Thus a grass- 

 hopper may be for two or three years a grub, for another six 

 months a hobbledehoy that is, a wingless thing, half grub, 

 half grasshopper and then for a further space a winged 

 grasshopper. In the last stage it marries, and there is an 



Q 



