IN FEATHERS AND FUR. 197 
wonderful instrument she has for the purpose. When closed up it 
is just the sort of a tool with which to bore into the ground to 
prepare the nurseries, in the first place, and when open it makes a 
safe and handy sort of tube for the egg to slip down. When she 
has ten or twelve — or about that number — placed in one snug room, 
she will pass on and make another. In that way, being sure that 
not all her babies will be destroyed, even if one of her nurseries is 
discovered and robbed. She will not be satisfied till she has laid 
about seventy eggs, and then she will go off into the grass, ready 
to die when the time comes, and leave her babies for the next 
Summer's sun to hatch out. When the babies come out of the 
shell, they are about as big as a tiny ant, but they grow very fast, 
throw off their old skins very often, and before long, come out as 
big as their mother. 
Grasshoppers are known in the books by a Greek name, which 
means "Murmurer," because of the noise they are so fond of mak- 
ing. The finest one of the family is the Great Green Grasshopper, 
who wears a suit of delicate light green, and is two inches long. 
He scorns to live in the grass, and passes his time in the trees, 
where he eats leaves. This little fellow is chiefly celebrated — 
among naturalists — for the beautiful structure of his gizzard. It 
has beautiful rows of teeth, arranged in bands, for the purpose of 
cutting up the pieces of leaf that the Grasshopper swallows. That 
would be a convenient arrangement for some young people I have 
seen, who swallow their food almost without chewing. 
Now I want to tell you about some cousins of the Grasshop- 
pers, who do not pass their lives in innocent hopping around the 
fields, paying for the small mischief they do by their pleasant, 
cheerful call. These relatives are the Locusts, and are a most 
dreadful pest to the country, coming in such clouds that they eat 
everything green before them. In hot countries they are common, 
and every means has been taken to be rid of them. In Asia and 
Africa their numbers are almost incredible ; they are so thick as to 
make almost total darkness, and they settle on the ground several 
inches thick, breaking down heavy branches of trees by their weight, 
and leaving the country as bare of green behind them, as though a 
fire had passed over it. 
One column of these insects was five hundred miles long, and 
so wide that it made the country almost totally dark where it passed. 
That was in India. I have read of whole armies being absolutely 
