THE MONSTERS OF OL'R I5ACK YARDS 



579 



given to them, and it is considered that 

 this is probably only one-tenth of those 

 that really exist." 



I must explain that all the creatures 

 shown are not insects ; for. strange as it 

 may seem to some of my readers, spiders 

 are not insects, for they have eight in- 

 stead of six legs and no feelers or an- 

 tennae. It is a pleasure to present these 

 monsters to the public as a showman 

 might, on a level with the eye and not 

 looking down on them as they are so 

 often shown in text-books on entomology. 



THE KIXG GRASSHOPPER (PAGE 5/6) 



The young king grasshopper is prob- 

 ably 20 days old, and its wings have not 

 developed, but it can jump a hundred 

 times its length, whereas man can 

 scarcely cover three times his length at a 

 leap. When its wings grow and its in- 

 ternal air sacs fill with air it can sail 

 away for miles. One representative of 

 this great family can sail for a thousand 

 miles before the wind, and they go in 

 such numbers that they make a cloud 

 2,000 square miles in extent. 



Its great front lip hides a pair of jaws 

 as etTective as a hay-chopper, and it has 

 an appetite as voracious as that of a hip- 

 popotamus. This voraciousness and 

 these jaws are what have made several 

 of its relatives the plague of mankind. 

 They multiply in such numbers as to 

 baffle all calculation, and every living 

 green thing for thousands of square 

 miles disappears down their throats, 

 leaving the country they infest desolate. 

 The great famine of Egypt, mentioned 

 in the book of Exodus ; the grasshopper 

 years of Kansas, which ruined thou- 

 sands of families on our plains, and 

 more recent devastations in Argentina 

 and South Africa are exami)les of the 

 tremendous effects which the migratory 

 locusts have had upon the happiness of 

 mankind. 



As this young king grasshopper stands 

 looking so inquiringly at one with his 

 varicolored eyes, each of which is com- 

 posed of hundreds of facets. I cannot 

 help thinking that he represents a crea- 

 ture quite as fascinating and actually 

 more dangerous than the East African 

 monsters of our school geographies. 



A BABY GRASSHOPPER (PAGE 577) 



A baby creature, scarcely two weeks 

 since it issued from a grasshopper egg, 

 and yet with two moults behind it — two 

 bright green l)aby skins cast oft' ! 



Imagine looking forward, as this baby 

 creature does, to the day when the pads 

 on its back shall have grown so long and 

 l)archment-like that it can leave its hop- 

 ping terrestrial existence and sail away 

 across the fields. Until that time, how- 

 ever, it must be content with its six 

 springy legs, pushing its way among the 

 blades of grass, tasting everything green 

 and eating what it likes, and hiding from 

 its enemies when moulting time comes 

 round. 



A young chick finds itself shut inside 

 the egg-shell and must work its way out 

 alone, but the young grasshoppers when 

 they hatch out find themselves — the 

 whole nestful — shut in a hardened case 

 in the ground made by their mother, and 

 it takes a half dozen of them working 

 together to dislodge the lid which shuts 

 them in. 



vouxG grasshopper's skeleton 



(PAGE 578) 



AMien the young grasshopper emerges 

 from the egg, it is very small indeed — 

 a wingless, helpless little creature, all legs 

 and mouth. 



It passes through successive ages, or 

 stages, as they are called, each one of 

 which is separated from the other by a 

 moult or casting of its outer shell. 



These moults take place at fixed pe- 

 riods, and as the insect finds itself re- 

 strained by its firm, inelastic skeleton, a 

 longitudinal rent occurs along the back, 

 and the insect, soft and dangerously help- 

 less, struggles out of the old skin in- 

 closed in a new but delicate cuticle, which 

 takes some time to harden and color up. 



Some people go to great trouble and 

 expense to keep the baby portraits and 

 even the baby shoes, and T cannot help 

 wondering whether a full-grown grass- 

 hopper, leading a life in the open air. is 

 ever interested in observing the baby 

 skeletons which sh(^w its five stages of 

 terrestrial life. 



What an interesting collection could 



