CHAPTER IX 
THE COCKROACHES, CRICKETS, LOCUSTS, GRASS¬ 
HOPPERS, AND KATYDIDS 
(Order Orthoptera) 
do not shut up our singing insects in cages 
as the Japanese do, and bring them into 
the house to cheer or amuse us, but we do 
enjoy them, and were our summer and 
early fall days and nights to become sud¬ 
denly silent of chirping and shrilling, we 
should realize keenly how companionable 
crickets and grasshoppers and katydids 
had been for us. A wholesome blitheness 
and vigor and ecstasy of living rings out 
in the swift and steadfast song of most of 
our field and wood insect singers, while 
the cheeriness of the cricket on the hearth 
Almost all this insect music comes from the members of one order, the 
Orthoptera. Indeed there is but one famous insect maestro , the cicada (of the 
order Hemiptera), which does not belong to the group of crickets, locusts, green 
grasshoppers, and katydids. Besides being singers, too, the Orthoptera 
are the characteristic leapers of the insect world; crickets and locusts easily 
surpass the world’s athletes for high jumping if the record takes into account 
the comparative size of the athletes. And, curiously, the singing Orthoptera 
are the leaping ones. Of the six families composing the order, three include 
insects which do not sing nor leap, while the other three are made up of 
singers and leapers. 
As one tramps the roadways or dry pastures in summer and autumn, 
the steady shrilling of the locusts on the ground, or their sharp “clacking” 
as they spring into air, are most familiar sounds. When you ramble through 
the uncut meadows and lush low grounds the still shriller singing of the 
slender-bodied, thin-legged, meadow green grasshopper is heard, while 
in the orchards and woods the snowy tree-crickets and broad-winged katydids 
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