ons 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 grasshoppers, 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 grasshoppers 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 grasshoppers!

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

They ate up every blade of grass.

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 grasshoppers all the
more now that we know something about how they are made, and something
about the little fellow that makes them.

[Illustration]

THE LONGHORNED GRASSHOPPERS

[Illustration]

Probably it was the longhorned grasshoppers 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 grasshoppers are very much like the
locusts, or shorthorned grasshoppers.

John says he thinks the meadow grasshoppers 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 grasshoppers.

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.