oh, sweet and tiny cousins that belong,
one to the fields, the other to the hearth,
both have your sunshine.
—leigh hunt.
ruth and belinda were crossing the meadow, when a big grasshopper made a flying leap, and landed on belinda’s head.
“do excuse me,” he said; “i missed my aim. no one hurt, i hope, or frightened?”
“oh, no,” answered ruth. “belinda is real sensible; she isn’t afraid of anything, and i am just as glad—as glad—to see you. maybe you will——”
83ruth hesitated, hoping he would know what she meant to say. she was sure he could tell her a great many things, if only he would. he was so polite and nice; besides, he looked very wise.
“i suppose you’re going to the concert,” said mr. grasshopper, after waiting a second for ruth to finish her sentence.
“concert?” she repeated, opening her eyes wide. “what concert?”
“why the straightwings’ concert. they give one every sunny day in summer. didn’t you know that? dear me, where were you hatched and where have you been living since? well, why do you stare at me so? don’t you like my looks?”
“oh, yes,” ruth hastened to answer. “you look very nice—something like a little old man.”
“i’ve heard that before, and there’s a story about it. shall i tell it?”
“yes, please; i just love stories.”
“very well. once upon a time, long, 84long ago, there lived in greece a beautiful young man named tithonus. now it chanced that tithonus loved aurora, the goddess of the dawn.”
“greece?” said ruth. “why, that’s where arachna lived, the one who turned into a spider, you know?”
“do you want to hear my story or don’t you?” asked mr. grasshopper, sharply.
“i do want to hear it. i really do.”
“very well, then, don’t interrupt me again. as i was saying, tithonus loved aurora, and every morning he would lie in the meadow and wait for her coming. then the fair goddess would give him her sweetest smiles. but one day tithonus grew pale and ill, and all the love of aurora could not make him well again. ‘alas!’ he cried, ‘i am mortal, and i must die.’ ‘nay,’ answered aurora, ‘you shall not die, for i will win for you the gift of the gods.’ and, speeding to the mighty jupiter, she begged that tithonus might be as a god, and live forever. so 85for a while they were happy together, but as the years passed tithonus grew old and bent, for aurora had forgotten to ask that he might always be young. grieving much, tithonus lay under the shadow of the trees and sighed through the long days.”
“‘ah, my tithonus,’ whispered aurora, ‘i love you too well to see you thus unhappy. no more shall you be sad or bend beneath an old man’s weakness, but, as a child of the meadow, happy and free, you shall sing and dance through the golden hours.’ in that moment tithonus became a grasshopper, and ever since then his descendants have danced and sung in the sunshine. that’s the end of the story. i might have made it twice as long, but summer is so short, and i want to dance.”
“it was a very nice story,” said ruth, “but do you really dance?”
“of course, our kind of dancing.”
“but don’t you do lots of other things too?”
86“yes; we give concerts, and we eat. we are hatched with big appetites, and a strong pair of jaws, and we start right in to use them on the tender grasses around us. we only follow our instincts, though men call it doing damage. you eat, don’t you?”
“why, yes, but i don’t eat grass, you know.”
“because it isn’t your food. you see it’s this way: in the kingdom of nature all creatures have a certain work to do, and each is exactly fitted for its place, for all are governed by laws more wonderful than any man has made. not that i wish to speak lightly of man, he is good enough in his place, but he is apt to think himself the whole thing, and he isn’t. maybe he doesn’t know that for every human creature on earth there are millions of plants and animals.”
“oh,” said ruth, “really and truly?”
“really and truly. you couldn’t begin to count them, and do you know, if the earth was to grow quite bare, with only one living plant left on it, the seeds from that one plant could make it green again in a very few years. but if certain insects were left without other creatures to eat and keep them down, the poor old earth would soon be bare once more. so you see there must be laws to fix all these things. nature balances one set of creatures against the other, so there will not be too many of any kind.”
ruth had listened in open-eyed astonishment. surely this was a very wise grasshopper.
“you know a great deal,” she managed to say at last.
“yes, i do,” was the answer. “i heard two men say the things i’ve just told you. they were walking across this meadow, and i listened and remembered. you see, i believe in learning even from men. but do listen to the concert—we are right in the middle of it.”
they certainly were in the middle of it. the zip, zip, zip, zee-e-ee-e of the meadow grasshoppers seemed to come from every part of the sunny field, while the shorthorns, or flying locusts, were gently fiddling under the grass blades, their wing covers serving for strings, and their thighs as fiddle bows, and the field crickets, not to be outdone, were scraping away with the finely notched veins of the fore wings upon their hind wings.
the longhorns were also there, some in green, others in brown or gray, all drumming away on the drum heads set in their fore wings.
“you would hear katydid too,” said mr. grasshopper, “only he refuses to sing in the day. he hides under the leaves of the trees while it is light, and comes out at night. if you think me wise, i don’t know what you would say of him. he is such a solemn-looking chap, always dressed in green, and his wing covers are like leaves. you might think him afraid if you saw him wave his long antennæ, but he isn’t. he is curious, that’s all. it is a high sort of curiosity, too, like mine—a wish to learn. i suppose you know we don’t make our music with our mouths?” he asked suddenly. “well, that is something,” he added, as ruth nodded “yes.”
“i sing with the upper part of my wing covers, but my cousins, the shorthorns, sing with their hind legs. why do you laugh? aren’t legs as good to sing with as anything else?”
“i—i suppose so,” said ruth. “it sounds funny, because i am not used to that kind of singing.”
“just it. now i shall tell you a few more facts about us. we belong to the order of the straightwings, or the orthoptera, as the wise men call it.”
“will you please tell me what that means?” asked ruth. “do all insects belong to something ending in tera? most everything i have talked to does except toads and spiders.”
“and they are not insects,” said mr. 91grasshopper. “not even the spiders. the word insect means cut into parts, and all insects have three parts, a head, and behind that the thorax or chest, and the abdomen. then, too, they always have six jointed legs. now maybe you have noticed that spiders are not built on this plan? there are only two parts of them. the head and thorax are in one. it is called the cephalothorax. i’d feel dreadfully carrying such a thing around with me, but the spiders do not seem to mind it. their other part is their abdomen. i heard a little boy say it was like a squashy bag; and between ourselves that is about what it is. of course you know that spiders have eight legs and that alone would settle the question. true insects never have but six. now as to the orders: all insects are divided into groups, and it is something about the wings which gives them their names. that is why they all end in ptera, because ptera comes from pteron, a word which means wing. it isn’t an english word, you know, but is taken from a language called greek.”
ruth listened very patiently. if she had heard all this in school it would have seemed very dry, but when a grasshopper is telling you things it is of course quite different.
“but i am sure i can never remember it all,” she said.
“ah, yes, you can. remembering is easy if you only practise it.”
“why, that’s like the white queen,” cried ruth. “she practised believing things till she could believe six impossible things at once, before breakfast.”
“i don’t know the person,” said the grasshopper.
“she lived in the looking glass country,” began ruth, but mr. grasshopper was not listening.
“you have met the diptera, or two wings,” he said. “that’s easy. then you’ve met the neuroptera, or nerve wings. that’s easy too. and now you have met the orthoptera, or straightwings, meaning me, and if i’m not easy, i should like to know who is. you see our wings are——”
“wings?” said ruth in surprise.
“of course. look here,” and opening his straight wing covers, mr. grasshopper showed as nice a pair of wings as one could wish to possess. “not all of us have wings,” he added, folding his own away, “but those of us who have not live under stones. our order includes graspers, walkers, runners, and jumpers. not all are musicians. the graspers live only in hot countries. maybe you have seen the picture of one of them—the praying mantis he is called, just because he holds up his front legs as if he were praying. but it isn’t prayers he is saying. he is waiting for some insect to come near enough so he may grab and eat it. that will do for him. next come the walkers. the walking stick is one, and he isn’t a good walker either, but the stick part of the name fits him. he is dreadfully thin. there is one on 94that twig now, and he looks so much like the twig you can scarcely tell which is which.”
“why, so he does,” said ruth, poking her finger at the twig mr. grasshopper pointed out. “isn’t he funny?”
“indeed,” grumbled the walking stick. “maybe you think it polite to come staring at a fellow, and sticking your finger at him, and then call him funny, but i don’t. i want to look like a twig. that’s why i am holding myself so stiff. i have a cousin in the tropics who has wings just like leaves.”
“yes,” added the grasshopper, “and his wife is so careless she just drops her eggs from the tree to the ground and never cares how they fall.”
“well, if that suits her no one else need object,” snapped the walking stick. “i believe in each one minding his own business.”
“an excellent idea,” said mr. grasshopper. “now let me see, where was i? oh! the runners; but you’ll excuse me, i will not speak of them at all. they include croton 95bugs and cock roaches, and it is quite enough to mention their names. with the jumpers it is different. they are the most important members of the order. i’m a jumper, i am also a true grasshopper. you can tell that by my long slender antennæ, longer than my body. for that reason i am called a longhorn, but my antennæ are really not horns.”
“i don’t see how any one could call them horns,” said ruth.
“no more do i, but some people have queer ideas about things. well, i don’t care much. there is my mate over there. do you notice the sword-shaped ovipositor at the end of her body? she uses it to make holes in the ground and also to lay her eggs in the hole after it is finished. yes, she is very careful. her eggs stay there all winter, and hatch in the spring, not into grubs or caterpillars, or anything of that sort. they will be grasshoppers, small, it is true, and without wings, but true grasshoppers, which need 96only to grow and change their skins to be just like us. and i’m sure we have nothing to be ashamed of. we have plenty of eyes, six legs, and ears on our forelegs, not like you people who have queer things on the sides of your heads. such a place for hearing! but every one to his taste. well, to go on, we have wing covers, and lovely wings under them, a head full of lips and jaws, and a jump that is a jump. what more could one wish? do you know what our family name is?”
ruth didn’t know they had a family name, so of course she could not say what it was.
“it is locustidae,” said mr. grasshopper, answering his own question. “funny too, for there isn’t a locust among us. locusts are the shorthorned grasshoppers—that is, their antennæ are shorter than ours. they are cousins, but we are not proud of them. they are not very good.”
“no one is asking you to be proud,” said a grasshopper, jumping from a nearby grass blade. she had a plump gray and green 97body, red legs, and brown wings, with a broad lemon-yellow band.
“what’s the matter with me?” she demanded. “i guess you don’t know what you are talking about. it’s the western fellow that is so bad. we eastern locusts are different.”
“well, i suppose you are,” agreed the longhorn. “i know the western locusts travel in swarms and eat every green thing in sight. they are called the hateful grasshoppers.”
“no one can say that our family has ever been called hateful or anything like it,” said a little cricket with a merry chirp. “we are considered very cheery company, and one of the sweetest stories ever written was about our english cousin, the house cricket.”
“i am sure you mean ‘the cricket on the hearth,’” said ruth. “it is a lovely story, and i think crickets are just dear. are you a house cricket too?”
“no, i belong to the fields, and i sing all day. sometimes i go into the house when winter comes and sing by the fire at night, but my real home is in the earth. i dig a hole in a sunny spot and mrs. cricket lays her eggs at the bottom, and fastens them to the ground with a kind of glue. sometimes there are three hundred of them, and you can imagine what a lively family they are when they hatch.”
“i should like to see them,” said ruth, for it was quite impossible for her to imagine so many baby crickets together.
“well, it is a sight, i assure you,” answered the little cricket. “did you ever come across my cousin the mole cricket? she is very large and quite clever. she makes a wonderful home with many halls around her nest. she is always on guard too so that no one may touch her precious eggs. then i have another cousin, who doesn’t dress in brown like me, but is all white. he lives on trees and shrubs and doesn’t eat leaves and grass as we do. he prefers aphides. you can 99hear him making music on summer evenings. we crickets seldom fly. we——”
the sentence was not finished, for just then a long droning note grew on the air, increasing in volume, until it rose above the meadow chorus.
“oh!” cried ruth, spying a creature with great bulging eyes and beautiful, transparent wings, glittering with rainbow tints, “there’s a locust! isn’t he beautiful, belinda? maybe he will tell us some things. oh, belinda, aren’t we in luck?”
