232 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
cast-off skins (exuviae) are common objects in grassy fields in 
midsummer, looking like pale ghosts of Grasshoppers, the sides 
of the mid-dorsal rent through which the adult escaped having 
closed nearly to their original position. 
The primal need of the young Locust is food; its principal 
activity is eating. Its function in the scheme of Nature is to 
convert the grass and herbage of the fields into animal tissue. 
During or at the end of its part in this process it is likely in turn 
to serve as food for other organisms, either higher or lower in the 
scale of existence (see Enemies). 
The process of food-getting is carried on continually during 
suitable weather, with brief periods for rest, molting, and perpetu- 
ation of the species, from birth to death. Some species are 
particular in diet but most of them are general feeders, insistent 
on quantity rather than quality, and eating the foliage of a wide 
variety of plants. Water is secured in part from the plant tissue 
consumed, but also in additional amounts, if needed, from dew 
and rain-drops. Like other New Englanders our resident Orthop- 
tera are at the mercy of the weather and perforce must adapt 
themselves to its vagaries. As a group they relish heat, and a 
majority prefer drought to dampness, preferences which they 
exhibit by certain readily observable habits. 
In early spring when nights are cold and the ground, sun- 
warmed during the day, gives out stored heat at night, over-win- 
tering species like the Green-striped, Spring Yellow-wing, and 
Coral-wing Locusts creep for warmth and protection during the 
cold night hours beneath tufts of grass, fallen leaves, or into 
crevices of the ear]Ji. In late summer, in salt-marshes and 
other wet places, I have seen hundreds of young Red-legged 
Locusts gathered to spend the night on the stems of grasses and 
other plants a foot or more above the wet and cold ground. At 
all times of the year they sun themselves when opportunity offers, 
but particularly after rain or near the end of the season. On 
Block Island, ten miles at sea, I once saw them massed in clusters 
on the sunset side of stone-walls and fences, basking in the 
declining rays while the air grew chill. In this way the warmth 
stored during the day in the blocks of stone was utilized by them 
to pass the night in greater comfort. 
When breeding-places become over-populated and food fails, 
