INSECTS 



The entomologist who plans to investigate the lives ot 

 grasshoppers finds it easier to begin his studies the year 

 before; instead of sitting the earth to find the eggs from 

 which the young insects are hatched in the spring, he ob- 

 serves the mature insects in the fall and secures a supply ot 

 eggs freshly laid by the females, either in the field or in 

 cages properly equipped for them. In the laboratory then 



Fig. I. Young grasshoppers 



he can closely watch the hatching and observe with ac- 

 curacy the details of the emergence. So, let us reverse the 

 calendar and take note of what the mature grasshoppers of 

 last season's crop are doing in August and September. 



First, however, it is necessary to know just what insect 

 is a grasshopper, or what insect we designate by the name; 

 for, unfortunately, names do not always signify the same 

 thing in different countries, nor is the same name always 

 applied to the same thing in different parts of the same 

 country. It happens to be thus with the term "grass- 

 hopper." In most other countries they call grasshoppers 

 "locusts," or rather, the truth is that we in the United 

 States call locusts "grasshoppers," for we must, of course, 

 concede priority to Old World usage. When you read of 

 a "plague of locusts," therefore, you must understand 

 "grasshoppers." But a swarm of "seventeen-year locusts" 

 means quite another insect, neither locust nor grasshopper 

 — correctly, a cicada. All this mix-up of names and many 

 other misfits in our popular natural history parlance we 



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