Part 26

Each grasshopper lives alone. He does nothing for his neighbor, and his neighbor does nothing for him.

When grasshoppers are numerous they damage the grass and the young crops.

FOOTNOTES:

See Nature Reader, No. 2. Lessons on Ants.

LESSON XVIII.

THE ROBBER COUSIN.

The Old Man of the Meadow is, in his way, like a quiet country gentleman. He roams about the fields, and likes to sing, and is fond of moonlight. He likes the shade, and the cool, still places under the green herbs.

He has a fierce cousin, who is a great robber, a kind of land pirate. His name is locust.

I asked a class of boys, “What is a locust?” One said: “It is a great, big grasshopper.”

Another said: “It is a greedy grasshopper that eats everything.”

A third said: “A locust is a grasshopper that travels in swarms.”

Now these were pretty good answers. Each had some truth in it. A locust is not a grasshopper. But it is much like a grasshopper. It is his very near relative.

The locust is not always larger than the grasshopper. The great green, or the wart-biter grasshopper, is larger than the Rocky Mountain locust. That locust is called “the hateful,” because he does so much harm.

The locust is generally larger than the grasshopper, and one very big locust is much larger than any grasshopper that ever was known. And, too, the locust is much more greedy.

The locust destroys all plants that come in its way. It will eat the bark off the trees.

Locusts live and move in swarms. Instead of living and dying in the places where they were born, they are given to travel. They migrate like the birds you will read of in this book.

It is not quite surely known what is the motive for their journeys. Probably it is to get food. The locust is the child of hot lands. His first home was, no doubt, in the great sandy plains of Asia. He is very common in Africa. In Europe and the eastern part of the United States he is not very common. In the Western States he has done much damage.

If you take up a locust to examine, you will at once notice that his feelers are much shorter than those of the grasshopper. Mrs. Locust also is without the sword for placing her eggs. She lays them in the earth in long tubes.

The front of the locust’s head is harder and thicker than the grasshoppers. The hind legs are also much thicker and stronger than even the big strong ones of the grasshopper.

The locust’s coat is of light brown or sand color. There is a delicate green tinge on the wings. The breast has a soft vest of down. The legs are often striped in bands of brown and yellow.

The locust does not make his music as the grasshopper does. When he wishes to sing, Mr. Locust stands on his two front pairs of legs. Then he lifts his hind legs, and draws them one by one, or both together, over his wings.

The inner side of the hind legs has rough file-like edges. The wings have thick veins, which stand like cords above the wing surface.

The file parts of the legs rub on these cords, and produce the sound. The sound takes different tones, as one or both legs are used at a time in making it. Sometimes the sound is very loud, sometimes it is very low.

In the latter part of the summer, Mrs. Locust lays her eggs, fifty or one hundred together, in a tube hidden in the earth. In places where locusts do much harm, rewards are given for baskets full of these tubes. Many boys make a living by digging them from the earth, and selling them to be destroyed.

For you must know that locusts being very greedy, and very numerous, do much harm. They move quickly, and in great swarms. Though they live in swarms they have no queen as the bees have, and they do no work as bees and ants do.

Probably there is no living thing seen in such numbers as the locusts. We can scarcely believe or understand what we are told about the multitudes of these insects which appear in the East.

They fill the sky like a great cloud, so that the day is darkened. When they see a green place, they settle to feed. In a few minutes the green is all gone. The place is as brown and bare as if a fire had swept over it.

People hear with terror that the locusts are coming. They know the crops will be eaten up. Then food will be scarce, and the people will be poor.