210 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
must speak of namely, the straight-winged insects," 5 * 
the grasshoppers, crickets, locusts, and cockroaches, 
which are not content with sucking, but tear and 
devour the grass and leaves with their strong jaws. 
These greedy devourers are a very ancient race of 
land-insects, and in fact if we attached importance 
to pedigrees they should have come first in order ; 
for at the time when the piece of coal you put on 
your fire to-day, and which has been lying for untold 
ages in the earth, was part of a living forest, grass- 
hoppers, crickets, and cockroaches were already creep- 
ing, leaping, and chirping in the dense jungle of ferns 
and reeds, where they left the remains of their bodies 
among the decaying plants, so that we find traces of 
them now in our coal-mines. From that time till 
now they have struggled on, and while the crickets 
have learnt to burrow long tunnels underground to 
hide themselves in, and have homes in the cracks of 
walls and in company with the cockroaches in the 
nooks by our firesides, the locusts and the grass- 
hoppers have contented themselves with the open 
fields and protection of the trees. 
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, 
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run 
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead 
That is the grasshopper's : he takes the lead 
In summer luxury he has never done 
With his delight, for when tired out with fun 
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. 
Let us look closely at him (Fig. 72), for he is so 
large that he will help us to understand the general 
structure of a six-legged insect better than we could 
have seen it in the tiny bugs. 
* Orthoptera (orihos, straight ; pteron, wing). 
