The Insect Folk Part 20

You hard little chitin-covered, segmented people, you are very different from us.

Ah! yes, May, they are like us in many ways.

Indeed, Mollie, insects do have brains.

They have muscles, too, to move their little bodies with.

We have muscles under our skin, you know. The muscles move our arms and legs and bodies.

If you clasp your fingers around your arm and then move your arm, you can feel the muscles.

The insects have muscles inside their chitinous sh.e.l.ls. The muscles move their bodies.

The muscles are very, very strong.

They are stronger for their size than the muscles of a horse.

John, do you know how heavy a load a horse can pull?

Well, it cannot pull a load equal to the weight of its own body.

Now, listen to this,--almost any insect can pull a load that is five times the weight of its body!

Ah, yes, some insects can pull a much heavier weight than that. The honey bee, for instance, can pull a load twenty times as heavy as its body.

And think how our little insect friends can jump! Why, a kangaroo cannot begin to jump like a gra.s.shopper.

No, indeed, Ned, the finest jumper in the world of men cannot begin to jump as well as a gra.s.shopper, not even with the aid of a spring board.

He is a mere baby in comparison.

Ah, yes, we can do a great many things better than the gra.s.shoppers, but, you see, they can do some things better than we can.

What is that, John?

You want to know about the mouth parts of the gra.s.shopper?

Suppose we leave the mouth parts.

They are difficult to understand. We have had a good many new names to learn lately.

What, May? You can't remember such hard words?

Oh, yes, of course you can.

You don't mind learning "rhinoceros," and "Mississippi," and "Popocatepetl," and "eenie, meenie, monie mike," and they are quite as hard as femur and tibia; and, besides, you have a femur yourself! Did you know it?

Your thigh bone, like the gra.s.shopper's thigh, is called a femur.

Yes, Mollie, there is a bone in your leg called the tibia, and you have a tarsus in your foot.

So, after all, when you are learning hard words about insects you are learning a great deal besides, as you will find.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

PRETTY KATYDIDS

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Katy did!

Katy didn't!

Katy did!

Well, well, did she or didn't she, and what of it anyway.

Come here, Katy did and Katy didn't, the children want to see you.

She's a pretty little Did and Didn't, isn't she.

Katy, why do you not know your own mind and always tell the same story?

Krick--krick--krick, there, she is talking; that's her way of saying "Katy did."

Krick--krick--krickkrick. Now she has said "Katy didn't."

Well, we never shall know anything more about it.

No, little Nell, she doesn't really say Katy did or Katy didn't, but it sounds like that, and we make believe she says it.

John says he is sure the katydids are first cousins to the gra.s.shoppers and locusts, and so they are.

They are very closely related to--which division of locusts, do you think?

Oh, yes, the longhorned, of course.

See their long, long antennae, and the male has the same little musical places on his wings, little membranes that vibrate and make his song of Katy did and Katy didn't.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

No, the little lady katydid cannot sing--only the little male, and he keeps it up all night long.

We sometimes wish he would get tired or sleepy and stop, but he never does.

Why do you suppose he likes to sing so well in the night?