LESSON XVIII.
THE ROBBER COUSIN.
The Old Man of the Meadow is, in his way, like a quiet country gentleman. He roams about the fields, and likes to sing, and is fond of moonlight. He likes the shade, and the cool, still places under the green herbs.
He has a fierce cousin, who is a great robber, a kind of land pirate. His name islocust.
I asked a class of boys, “What is a locust?” One said: “It is a great, big grasshopper.”
Another said: “It is a greedy grasshopper that eats everything.”
A third said: “A locust is a grasshopper that travels in swarms.”
Now these were pretty good answers. Each had some truth in it. A locust isnota grasshopper. But it is much like a grasshopper. It is his very near relative.
The locust is not always larger than the grasshopper. The great green, or the wart-biter grasshopper, is larger than the Rocky Mountain locust. That locust is called “the hateful,” because he does so much harm.
The locust is generally larger than the grasshopper, and one very big locust is much larger than any grasshopper that ever was known. And, too, the locust is much more greedy.
The locust destroys all plants that come in its way. It will eat the bark off the trees.
Locusts live and move in swarms. Instead of living and dying in the places where they were born, they are given to travel. They migrate like the birds you will read of in this book.
It is not quite surely known what is the motive for their journeys. Probably it is to get food. The locust is the child of hot lands. His first home was, no doubt, in the great sandy plains of Asia. He is very common in Africa. In Europe and the eastern part of the United States he is not very common. In the Western States he has done much damage.
If you take up a locust to examine, you will at once notice that his feelers are much shorter than those of the grasshopper. Mrs. Locust also is without the sword for placing her eggs. She lays them in the earth in long tubes.
The front of the locust’s head is harder and thicker than the grasshoppers. The hind legs are also much thicker and stronger than even the big strong ones of the grasshopper.
The locust’s coat is of light brown or sand color. There is a delicate green tinge on the wings. The breast has a soft vest of down. The legs are often striped in bands of brown and yellow.
The locust does not make his music as the grasshopper does. When he wishes to sing, Mr. Locust stands on his two front pairs of legs. Then he lifts his hind legs, and draws them one by one, or both together, over his wings.
The inner side of the hind legs has rough file-like edges. The wings have thick veins, which stand like cords above the wing surface.
The file parts of the legs rub on these cords, and produce the sound. The sound takes different tones, as one or both legs are used at a time in making it. Sometimes the sound is very loud, sometimes it is very low.
In the latter part of the summer, Mrs. Locust lays her eggs, fifty or one hundred together, in a tube hidden in the earth. In places where locusts do much harm, rewards are given for baskets full of these tubes. Many boys make a living by digging them from the earth, and selling them to be destroyed.
For you must know that locusts being very greedy, and very numerous, do much harm. They move quickly, and in great swarms. Though they live in swarms they have no queen as the bees have, and they do no work as bees and ants do.
Probably there is no living thing seen in such numbers as the locusts. We can scarcely believe or understand what we are told about the multitudes of these insects which appear in the East.
They fill the sky like a great cloud, so that the day is darkened. When they see a green place, theysettle to feed. In a few minutes the green is all gone. The place is as brown and bare as if a fire had swept over it.
People hear with terror that the locusts are coming. They know the crops will be eaten up. Then food will be scarce, and the people will be poor.
If by chance a swarm is destroyed by other means than by fire, all the air for miles will be filled with the bad smell of the decaying bodies.
The only good that poor people can get from the locusts is by eating them. They pull off the wings, and legs, and dry the bodies. They eat them fried in oil and salt, or ground into meal, after roasting.
The locusts cannot fly against the wind. They go with the wind. It brings them, and if it changes, it sweeps them away. Sometimes the wind drives them out to sea. If they become too weary to fly, they drop into the waves and are drowned. This often happens. Then the water washes their bodies ashore. The coast of Africa has been found covered thick with them, for the space of fifty miles.
But they do not always drop into the sea. They are very strong on the wing. A great swarm of locusts was met by a ship, twelve hundred miles from shore. They surrounded the ship, and hid the sun.
As their flight is so strong, locusts can go from one country to another. They pass from Africa to the south of Europe. They go from the mainland to the islands.
Usually the locusts fly during the day, while the air is hot and dry. Late in the day they settle to feed, and where they stop they stay until all green things are eaten up. Of course they do not feed when on the wing. They run along the ground to eat.
People try many ways of killing locusts. Sometimes deep trenches are cut, and filled with water, so that the young unwinged locusts, as they run along the ground, will fall in and be drowned. But the locusts are in such numbers that the drowned ones soon fill the trenches. The others run safely over the dead bodies.
Sometimes great fires are lit across their path. Then the hordes of locusts crowd on, and at last, the fires are put out by the burned bodies. After that, the others pass on unhurt.
You must know that the young locust is quite as greedy, and as great a terror as his parents. In the larval and pupal states, they migrate as well as when they have wings. They seem born to eat and to travel. At this stage they go by walking. They marchin a solid column like soldiers. They move straight on, nothing turning them aside. Is a house in the way? Over it and into it they go. You know some ants move in swarms in this way.[15]
The locust, being larger, more numerous, and more greedy than the ants, do much harm. If they find a town in their path, through it they go. Countless numbers may be killed, but there are countless numbers to follow. Is a river in the way? Into it they tumble, and when enough dead bodies lie on the water to make a raft, the other locusts pass safely over.
One great trouble about the locust is, that when a full-grown swarm passes through a place the ground is left full of eggs. The next year these hatch, and the larvæ and pupæ eat up all that has grown since their parents ravaged the land.
Famines of two or three years duration have been caused in this way. You will not wonder at the strength of locusts and the amount of food they need, when I tell you that one kind is quite a foot broad from tip to tip of the wings.
The great foreign locusts are very splendid to look at. They are dressed like soldiers in crimson and blue. Their fierce eyes shine, and the rushof their wings makes a sound like the coming of an army.
Did I not give this locust a good name, when I called him the robber cousin?
FOOTNOTES:[15]See Nature Reader, No. 2. Lessons on Ants.
[15]See Nature Reader, No. 2. Lessons on Ants.
[15]See Nature Reader, No. 2. Lessons on Ants.