d.

It is divided into spaces like so many little drum-heads. The ridge that
runs across the top of the wing is something like a file in structure.

When little Mr. Cricket is in the mood for chirping, he raises his wing
covers and rubs them together.

This throws the stiff membranes of which the wing covers are made into
vibration, and the result is the cheery call of our little black fairy.

Little Nell says the cricket is more like a brownie than a fairy, and
maybe she is right.

You can easily see the crickets rub their wings together if you watch in
the fall of the year.

John says, Why do you have to watch in the fall of the year?

Now who can guess?

Yes, May, it is because the crickets are then full-grown, and have
large wing covers. At first, in the early summer, they have no wings,
and so of course, we could not see them chirp.

The whole grasshopper tribe is a vocal one; the males all have musical
instruments, and in Japan, the people are so fond of the song of _their_
grasshopper folk, which are not quite like ours, that they make tiny
cages for them.

The chirpers are caught and put in these cages, and sold in the city
streets.

Yes, little Nell, the crickets make molasses. So do the katydids.

All these little hopping neighbors of ours seem to understand the useful
art of molasses making.

The mole crickets are different from the others.

[Illustration]

They burrow in the ground like a mole, and we do not often see them.

The strangest thing about them is their hands.

No, of course they are not really hands, but they look like them.

All the joints of the fore legs are modified to form strong digging
tools, and they look very much like the paws of the mole.

[Illustration]

They are troublesome fellows, sometimes, when they eat the tender roots
of the vegetables in the garden.

You all have seen the little tree cricket, but you might not recognize
it as a cricket, it is such a pale little creature.

Its light green body may often be seen on bushes in the summer-time,
and, if you look carefully, the form will tell you what the little one
is.

[Illustration]

A LARGE FAMILY

[Illustration]

The crickets, grasshoppers, walking sticks, praying mantes, and
cockroaches, strange as it may seem, are all near relatives to each
other.

They all belong to one large family or order, the ORTHOPTERA.

Or-thop-te-ra, is it not a hard word!

It will not seem so hard when y