THE GRASSHOPPER 



increased size of the antennae, legs, and wings causes them 

 to be compressed in the narrow space between the new and 

 the old cuticula, and, when the latter is cast off, the 

 crumpled appendages expand to their full size. The ob- 

 server then gets the impression that he is witnessing a sud- 

 den transformation. The impression, however, is a false 

 one; what is really going on is comparable with the display 

 of new dresses and coats that the merchant puts into his 

 show windows at the proper season for their use, which he 

 has just unpacked from their cases but which were pro- 

 duced in the factories long before. 



The adult grasshoppers lead prosaic lives, but, like a 

 great many good people, they fill the places allotted to 

 them in the world, and see to it that there will be other 

 occupants of their own kind for these same places when 

 they themselves are forced to vacate. If they seldom fly 

 high, it is because it is not the nature of locusts to do so; 

 and if, in the East, one does sometimes soar above his 

 fellows, he accomplishes nothing, unless he happens to 

 land on the upper regions of a Manhattan skyscraper, 

 when he may attain the glory of a newspaper mention of 

 his exploit — most likely, though, with his name spelled 

 wrong. 



On the other hand, like all common folk born to ob- 

 scurity and enduring impotency as individuals, the grass- 

 hopper in masses of his kind becomes a formidable creature. 

 Plagues of locusts are of historic renown in countries south 

 of the Mediterranean, and even in our own country hordes 

 of grasshoppers known as the Rocky Mountain locust did 

 such damage at one time in the States of the Middle West 

 that the government sent out a commission of entomolo- 

 gists to investigate them. This was in the years following 

 the Civil War, when, for some reason, the locusts that 

 normally inhabited the Northwest, east of the Rocky 

 Mountains, became dissatisfied with their usual breeding 

 grounds and migrated in great swarms into the States of 

 the Mississippi valley, where they brought destruction to 



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