198 EYE SPY 



for any great length, and he was soon captured. 

 Upon examination his wings seemed partially- 

 paralyzed, but otherwise he appeared to be in 

 good health and spirits, his hind legs being espe- 

 cially lively and snappy. I immediately took the 

 insect to my studio, and pinned him through the 

 thorax. He was strong enough to pull out the 

 pin from the board and jump around the room 

 with it in my temporary absence. 



I lost no time in taking his portrait, which 

 figured in the illustration to the article on " Foot- 

 prints " as " the ungainly victim," I little dream- 

 ing when I gave him such a title what a re- 

 markable sort of victim he even then was. The 

 drawing took me about ten minutes. I then 

 left the studio, and was absent precisely fifteen 

 minutes. Upon returning I found the grass- 

 hopper dead. 



My curiosity was aroused, not only by such a 

 rapid demise (for the impaling through the thorax 

 is not usually an immediately fatal injury to an 

 insect), but especially by some very strange and 

 unnatural automatic movements of the victim — 

 head protruding and turning from side to side ; 

 queer expansion of body, as though breathing; 

 unusual lifting and other motions of legs, particu- 

 larly of hind legs ; the whole demonstration a 

 mockery on life. The grasshopper was pinned to 

 my drawing-board, and against a piece of news- 



