The Insect Folk Part 17

Mollie says they are rudimentary wings.

It continues to eat and grow and moult, and the little wings are moulted off with the rest of the skin--for the wings of the insect are only modified parts of the skin.

But there are new and larger wings underneath, and these grow and are moulted off with the next skin, until, at last, the gra.s.shopper is full-grown, with full-grown wings.

It will not moult any more after that.

When full-grown, the females lay their eggs.

Where do you suppose they lay their eggs?

Some of them make a hole in the ground.

The end of the abdomen is very strong and sharp, and the locust can make a hole with it quite easily.

When the hole is made, then the eggs are laid in it, and the locust covers the opening to the hole with a sticky substance to keep out the wet.

The eggs usually lie in the ground all winter.

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Just think of the locust eggs there are under our feet as we cross the fields!

Millions and millions of little eggs are hidden in the ground.

Early in the next summer the little eggs hatch, and then tiny locusts creep up out of the earth and go hopping about everywhere.

Most of the full-grown locusts die in the fall.

As you know, the young ones have no wings, and this is why there are so few winged locusts early in the summer.

Some locusts make their holes in fence rails or in old stumps.

It is the locusts, or shorthorned gra.s.shoppers, that sometimes come in swarms that darken the sun.

There is nothing the Western farmer dreads so much as a swarm of locusts.

I have heard how the gra.s.shoppers came in Kansas one year.

They appeared all of a sudden in countless millions.

They were piled up against the fences clear to the top.

They swarmed into the houses, and in places on the railroad track they were piled so deep the trains could not run through them.

Think of a railway train being stopped by gra.s.shoppers!

They stripped every leaf from the trees and left them as bare as in winter.

They ate up every blade of gra.s.s.

But in the East they do not do so much damage, though they sometimes cause the farmers serious loss. When summer comes we may listen to their cheery din with pleasure.

I am sure we shall enjoy the merry sounds of the gra.s.shoppers all the more now that we know something about how they are made, and something about the little fellow that makes them.

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THE LONGHORNED GRa.s.sHOPPERS

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Probably it was the longhorned gra.s.shoppers that Charlie saw so many of in the meadow.

Look, next time, Charlie, and see if the swarms that start up before you have not long, slender antennae.

See, here is one.

Its antennae are like threads, and they are longer than its body.

If you were to look at its tarsus, you would find it had four joints instead of three.

Otherwise, the longhorned, or meadow gra.s.shoppers are very much like the locusts, or shorthorned gra.s.shoppers.

John says he thinks the meadow gra.s.shoppers are more slender and delicate in shape.

That is true, as a rule, though there are some species of the locusts that are as slender as the longhorned gra.s.shoppers.

But there is one thing about these longhorned fellows that will amuse you.

Some of them have ears on their front legs!

It is not uncommon for insects to have hearing organs on their front legs.

You know what an ear is. It is something to hear with. The hearing part of our own ears is way inside, out of sight.

The outer part of the ear, that we can take hold of, is only a sort of funnel to gather up the sound, and we could still hear if this part of our ears were cut off.

Way back inside the ear is a little curtain, or eardrum, made of a thin membrane.

When sounds enter the ear they cause the eardrum to tremble or vibrate, and this excites the nerve of hearing that is behind the eardrum.

Now some gra.s.shoppers have a little flat membrane on the tibia of each front leg. It is an eardrum. Behind it is the nerve of hearing. When sounds strike the eardrum it vibrates and excites the nerve of hearing.

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