Grasshopper

“ As we continue our walk, our feet, treading down the grass, cause a lively disturbance, like that which Gulliver raised among the Lilliputians. Every sort of frightened thing, large and small, hops up and down in front of us, behind us, to the right and left. But, out of the confusion of sounds that accompany the disturbance, there strikes upon us, over-sounding all, a sharp rattling every child knows the musician the green jumper of the meadows, the grasshopper. What is the instrument that this animal plays upon? The grasshopper is a real fiddler. ”

“ While the grasshopper thus indulged its strain of self-conceit, a bolt of lightning fell upon an oak near by, and shattered its trunk into a thousand splinters. One of them struck the mullen-stalk, and the vain insect was crushed in an instant. ”

“ The grasshoppers are a very timid family, and are very sensitive to sound. Some say that their long feelers serve them for ears. But that is not true.
The garden grasshopper has very small wings. Its color is brownish gray. It likes to live in the garden walls or under the leaves in the borders. Both Mr. and Mrs. Grasshopper sing in this garden family. They keep up fine music for those who like to hear them, as one answers the song of the other.
I think we most of us like the cry of the grasshopper. It brings to our mind the warm, dry, sunny days, the time of flowers. ”

“ When stridulating it appeared to be the ambition of every male grasshopper to get up as high as he could climb on the stiff blades and thin stalks of the grass; and there, very conspicuous in his uniform green colour which in a strong sunlight looked like the green of verdigris, his translucent overwings glistening like a dragon-fly's wings, he would shrill and make the grass to which he was clinging tremble to his rapidly vibrating body. ”

“ But when you see the large, long legs stretched out behind, and the very long feelers waving to the tips of the wings, you will know that this is a grasshopper. All this brown and black and crimson splendor is the Old Man of the Meadow, with a very fine coat.
The grasshopper is not migratory. It does not change its home. It dies near where it was born. Frost and cold kill it. It does not outlive the winter, as butterflies, bees, and wasps do.
Grasshoppers appear in great numbers, but they do not go in swarms as locusts do.
Each grasshopper lives alone. ”

“ Another charming spectacle it is in the summer-time to watch a pack of bustards about sunset, all busy with their evening feed among the grasshoppers on a thistle-covered plain. They are working against time, for it will soon be too dark for them to catch such lively prey. With quick, darting step they run to and fro, picking up one grasshopper after another with unerring aim, and so intent on their feed that the best chance of the day is then offered to their pursuer, when greed, for the moment, supplants caution, and vigilance is relaxed. ”

“ Perched on a point of vantage on some tree-top or weather-vane, his hawk-like eye can detect a grasshopper going through the grass fifty yards away.
What is our surprise when some fine warm day in March, just before our butcher, ogre, sneak, and fiend leaves us for colder regions, to hear him break out into song! Love has warmed even his cold heart, and with sweet, warbled notes on the tip of a beak that but yesterday was reeking with his victim's blood, he starts for Canada, leaving behind him the only good impression he has made during a long winter's visit. ”

“ Anyone who has tried feeding a grasshopper will agree with me.
Yet he is one of the most interesting of British creatures. The Encyclopædia Britannica is as terse and simple as ever about him. “Grasshoppers,” it says, “are specially remarkable for their saltatory powers, due to the great development of the hind legs; and also for their stridulation, which is not always an attribute of the male only.” To translate, grasshoppers have a habit of hopping (“saltatory powers”) and chirping (“stridulation”) .
It is commonly supposed that the grasshopper stridulates by rubbing his back legs together ”

“ It is not put on in plumes and scales, as the butterfly has it. But it is dyed through and through the wings and body.
The wing-cases of the grasshopper, and the rings of the [Pg 108] body, are not hard, and like horn or shell, as in the beetle tribe. They are of a tough skin, and are dyed with the color.
Let us have a look at some of these fine fellows. Although the color of the great, green grasshopper is so gay, it will be hard to find him. His coat is just the tint of the leaves he likes to live among. You can scarcely see him even if you look straight at him. ”

“ Not more than two seconds after Grasshopper Green had changed his size, Mouser managed to burst open the door!
What a strange-looking Monster he would be!
At the sight that met his eyes, the Cat was nearly paralyzed with surprise. And no wonder.
Although a Grasshopper is usually a very good natured little fellow he has a really terrifying face, but we don't notice it because he's so small.
Look very closely at one sometime and then try to imagine what a strange looking monster he would be if he were as big as a dog! ”

“ The grasshopper has a more highly developed sense of humor than any other known insect. It is an established fact that after a person has fallen upon his face and clawed at the earth where the grasshopper was but is not, the grasshopper will be seen distinctly to laugh from his coign of vantage beyond reach.
Furthermore, it is quite impossible to fathom the mind of the grasshopper, his intentions or habits; particularly those of the small, gray-pink variety. He is as erratic in his flight as a clay pigeon, though it is tolerably safe to assume that he will not jump backward. ”

“ INSECTS The Grasshopper Suggestions.—Collect grasshoppers, both young and full-grown, and keep alive in broad bottles or tumblers and feed on fresh grass or lettuce. When handling a live grasshopper, never hold it by its legs, as the joints are weak. To keep them for some time and observe their moults, place sod in the bottom of a box and cover the box with mosquito netting or wire gauze. ”

“ A grasshopper is contemptible. The farmer can crush him at a step. But let the plague of grasshoppers be let loose, and all his fields be deluged with them; and how easily do myriads of creatures that are individually weak overwhelm him and destroy all his labor!
We have a realizing sense of the unequal war which is waged between man and insects. It seems in late years as if horticulture might as well be abandoned. Cherries and plums go down before the curculio; apples before the canker-worm, the tent-worm, and the apple-worm; currants before a worm peculiar to itself ”

“ But Grasshopper had grown reckless. Along came a flock of mountain chickens, and he strung his bow, and shot them as they flew, for no better reason than because they were Man-a-bo-zho's, and not because he needed them for food. Bird after bird fell, pierced by his arrows; when they had fallen, he would throw their bodies down the cliff, upon the beach below.
At last Kay-oshk, the sea-gull, spied him at this cruel sport, and gave the alarm. "Grasshopper is killing us," he called. "Fly, brothers! Fly away, and tell our protector that Grasshopper is slaying us with his arrows." ”

“ The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup in the grass, and a long thin dragon-fly floated by on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and he wondered what was coming. ”

“ It takes peptonica thirty or forty minutes to catch [253] a grasshopper, and at each visit she remains for ten or fifteen minutes inside the nest. The grasshopper is carried in the mandibles, supported by the second and third pairs of legs. We never succeeded in opening a nest of this species, but a grasshopper taken as the wasp was bringing it home did not die until the sixth day.
In our summer work we often found ourselves wishing that we could be in half a dozen places at once and could chase several wasps at the same time. ”

“ The mouth of the grasshopper is328 wide, and it has strong jaws. But they are not so strong as those of his cousin, the cricket.
Grasshoppers prefer vegetable food. They will sometimes eat animal food. When two are shut up in a box, they will fight, and the one which is killed will be eaten by the victor.
If you could look inside the grasshopper’s body, you would see that he has a gizzard much like that of a chicken. It is made of little bands set with fine teeth. These teeth chew up into a pulp the leaves which the grasshopper has eaten. ”

“ The grasshopper lays its eggs at the close of summer, and dies after laying them. The fact is that, at the time of laying the eggs, grubs are engendered in the region of the mother grasshopper's neck; and the male grasshoppers die about the same time. In springtime they come out of the ground; and, by the way, no grasshoppers are found in mountainous land or in poor land, but only in flat and loamy land, for the fact is they lay their eggs in cracks of the soil. ”

“ But you see I was just capturing a new and very rare specimen of a yellow grasshopper when you came along. I almost had him in my net, but he jumped under a stone, and I was afraid if the horses came along they might step on the stone, and crush the insect or run a wheel over him. That’s why I wanted to stop you. I’m glad I did, though I’ll have to put a new handle on my net, for it’s broken. But I must see if I have the grasshopper.”
He ran to a flat stone in the road, carefully raised it, and made a grab for something underneath. ”

“ It is wonderful how lightly the creatures of the fields and woods sleep. The faintest rustle brings chirping from the bushes, and in the densest darkness the wood pigeons coo. Jays screech in the glade, and the wood-owls hoot. One of the essentially night-singers is the grasshopper warbler. Shy and retiring in its habits, it is rarely found far distant from aquatic vegetation. Moist situations are most congenial, as among the plants that effect them it finds its winged food. ”

“ The grasshopper lives much in the grass, and his chief motion is in hops, or long jumps. He has another name, “the murmurer.” This is given him because of the noise or song he makes. His song is loud and shrill. It is made by rubbing his wings one upon the other. He has a little piece of skin like a tight drumhead set in each wing. As he moves his wings, this tiny drum vibrates, or trembles, and makes the shrill sound. Mrs. Grasshopper does not have this drum in her wings. ”

“ The Green Grasshopper (Locusta viridissima, Lin.) does not appear to be common in my neighbourhood. Last year, intending to make a study of this insect [286] and finding my efforts to hunt it fruitless, I was obliged to have recourse to the good offices of a forest-ranger, who sent me a pair of couples from the Lagarde plateau, that bleak district where the beech-tree begins its escalade of the Ventoux.
Now and then freakish fortune takes it into her head to smile upon the persevering. What was not to be found last year has become almost common this summer. ”

“ Hundreds of little grasshoppers on the grass indicate that the grasshopper can reproduce its own kind, but in other respects the animal seems quite unlike the plant. The animal moves, breathes, feeds, and has sensation, while apparently the plant does none of these. ”

“ By and by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged all over the same old ground once more, it is finally dumped at about the spot where it originally lay, the two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtfully and decide that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property after all, and then each starts off in a different direction to see if he can't find an old nail or something else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at the same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it. ”

“ This species is far more abundant on the plains of the Missouri river region than in any other section of our country. It is found on the high dry plains anywhere, and when fat, as it generally is, from the abundance of its favorite food, the grasshopper, is one of the most delicious imaginable. ”

“ This is the little grasshopper which rises before our footsteps in swarms on a hot summer's day; it is one of the last insects to leave us in the autumn, being frequently found in warm situations on fine days in the middle of winter. ”

“ This is only because we do not recognize their caterpillars or grubs as flies and beetles; but a grasshopper we know grows, because its early stages are of the same general form as the perfect insect, and we see the little ones hopping about in some places, and if we visit the same place later on we notice that they have grown, but as soon as they cast their last skin and obtain the free use of their wings, growth ceases, as it does in a fly or a beetle or in any other insect. ”

“ Unless one has followed it closely in its flight and has kept the eye fixed on it after alighting it is usually impossible to distinguish it from its surroundings. And this is greatly to the advantage of the grasshopper in its efforts to escape its enemies, that is, in its struggle for existence. ”