ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 25 



"than those of most grasshoppers, and do not taper towards the end, but are nearly of 

 •«qual thickness at Both extremities. Their feet have really only three joints ; but as the 

 under side of the first joint is marked by one or two cross lines, the feet, when seen only 

 from below, seem to be four or five jointed. The females have not a long projecting 

 piercer, like the " * * " grasshoppers, but the extremity of their body is provided 

 •with four short, wedge-like pieces placed in pairs above and below." * . * 



•'' The males, though capable of producing sounds, have not the cymbals and tabors 

 of the crickets and grasshoppers ; their instruments may rather be likened to violins, 

 their hind legs being the bows and the projecting veins of their wing-covers the strings. 

 Ibid, p. 165. 



Between the grasshopper and the locust then there are well-marked differences in 

 structure, and in their methods of producing musical notes. But these differences have 

 <come to be recognized by naturalists in very modern days. 



By the English generally both kinds of insects are still called grasshoppers. If I 

 had been asked when a boy to tell the differences between them, I should probably have 

 said, the locusts are creatures that we read of in the Bible and books of travel ; the grass- 

 hoppers are those long-legged fellows that spring up before you when you walk through 



the grass. 



We learn from Kirby and Spence that it was reported that a cloud of grasshoppers 

 had enveloped a ship when it was distant 200 miles from land. Here locusts were 

 certainly meant, for grasshoppers (as we understand them) are incapable of long sustained 

 ilight. And Hasselquist quoted by the same authors tells of " locusts or grasshoppers." 



I have no doubt that with the translators of our English Bible " grasshoppers " and 

 ^'locusts" were synonymous terms. The Hebrew word Arbek is translated by them, in 

 some places (as in Exodus X, Proverbs XXX, 27) locust, in others (as in Judges VI, 5 

 and Jeremiah XLVI, 23) grasshoppers. And in the Prayer Book version of the 

 Psalms — a version retained from the "Great Bible" of A.D. 1540 — the reference in 

 Psalm CV, 34, to the Plague of Locusts in Egypt reads thus, — " He spake the word, and 

 the grasshoppers came, and caterpillars innumerable : and did eat up all the grass in their 

 land, and devoured the fruit of their ground." 



Again, for the better understanding of my subject I will ask you to glance at the 

 life history of the locust as it is known to us. It is very much the same in all lands. 



The mother locust when about to deposit her eggs makes an opening in the earth 

 about an inch deep, using her abdomen as a drill. The horny plates at the extremity of 

 iher body which she can bring to a point for the penetrating of the soil, and expand for 

 the widening ot the orifice made, enable her to work with facility. In the receptacle 

 thus formed she lays a batch of eggs surrounding it with a frothy mucous which hardens 

 into a protection against moisture. She then conceals the hole. 



It is calculated that each female will deposit in the course of the season from 10 to 



175 eggs. 



In due time the young larvae appear, and comical little fellows they are, largely 

 made up of legs of which they have six. They are gregarious by instinct, and they have 

 healthy appetites. They feed and grow, and cast off their skins when these become too 

 tight for them — having more expansive ones beneath. 



They have no wings ; and when they march they take a few steps and then a jump, 

 —a few steps and then a jump, — and so onwards. In Eastern lands where they abound, 

 this mode of progression gives to their advancing multitudes a strangely undulatory and 

 wave-like appearance. 



With many kinds of insects the pupal state is a quiescent state — not so with the 

 locusts. Their pupae are both active and voracious. Tney cannot fly, but they bear the 

 cases in which the wings of the future imagines are forming. 



At length the time comes for the perfect insect to appear ; the skin of the pupa splits 

 ■along the back, and the imago extrudes itself, drawing its wings out of their esses, and 



