“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. Grasshopper. “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——”