ADAPTATION FOR THE INDIVIDUAL 93 
Insects are so common that anyone, who cares to, 
may easily verify what is here described. It will take 
nothing but a clear observant eye and a little patience 
to make out what is suggested. Each of our com- 
mon insects has one of two clearly defined habits in 
the matter of food. Either it eats solid food, which 
must be made fine before it can be taken into the 
mouth, or it feeds upon liquids. These liquids may 
be easily accessible like the nectar of flowers, in which 
case one sort of mouth will serve; or they may be the 
juices inside the tissues of animals and plants, when 
an entirely different type of mouth must be employed 
in their acquisition. Perhaps the most easily found 
representative of the biting type of mouth, which 
breaks up solid food, will be seen in the common 
grasshopper. Doubtless each one of my readers has 
at some time taken a grasshopper into his hand, and, 
holding the tip of his finger against the insect’s 
mouth, has promised the creature its freedom on con- 
dition that it disclosed its reprehensible habit of chew- 
ing tobacco. The grasshopper surely complied, and I 
trust the promiser was as good as his word. The 
grasshopper’s head is so placed that, while it is at the 
front of its body, the mouth is directly on the under 
side of its head, while the eyes are at the top of the 
front of its face. Under these circumstances it can- 
not see what is going into its mouth, and this makes 
