The feelers of the cricket are very long and slender, and at the end of the body of the male are two long hairy bristles, which seem almost like a second pair of feelers, warning the insect of danger approaching from behind. At the end of the body of the female is a long spear-like organ, with a spoon-like tip. This is called the ovipositor, and by means of it the eggs are laid in holes punched in the soil.
Crickets have large wings, and fly rather like the woodpeckers, rising and falling in the air at every stroke.
Another kind of cricket lives in holes in the ground, which it digs by means of its front legs. These limbs are formed almost exactly like the fore feet of the mole, and for this reason the insect is known as the mole-cricket. It is generally found in sandy fields, and scoops out a chamber almost as big as a hen's egg at the end of its burrow, in which to lay its eggs and where it lies, showing only its jaws and great front legs until some small creature comes near upon which it may pounce for food.
Grasshoppers
Right here has come a mixing up of names between the English, as spoken and written in Great Britain, and that used in the United States. When an Englishman speaks of a grasshopper he means the related insect which we call a cicada, or katydid, and this we call a locust; but when he says "locust" he refers to what we call "grasshopper." We suspect he is nearer right than we are, who have unfortunately fallen in with the mistake of some ignorant early settler. At any rate the locusts of which we read in the Bible, and in books of travel in desert regions, are all of the same race as our grasshoppers. None of the cicada tribe could ever do so much damage.
Grasshoppers (to stick to our own name) abound in all warm countries, especially in those which in summer, at least, are hot and dry, such as Egypt, or Syria, or parts of India. They feed exclusively on leaves, blades of grass, and the like, and are strong fliers; and in countries that are favorable to them, where they are always very plentiful, certain species sometimes become excessively abundant, and then spread over the land, and swarm away to neighboring countries, in such immense numbers that they devour every green leaf and every blade of grass, or spear of grain, until they leave the ground as bare as if it had been swept by fire.
Nor is this the worst, for wherever they go the females push quantities of eggs down into the ground. The following summer these eggs hatch, and the devastation of the previous year is repeated, for where before dense clouds of flying grasshoppers descended from the sky, now enormous armies of grubs march over the ground, climb all the plants and bushes, and devour all that has newly sprung up.
Millions may be killed by fire or other means, but it has little effect, and the farmers and grazers of a region so visited are all but ruined—perhaps wholly so.
When, in the last century, men began to settle on the prairies of the far West, they met this plague; and between 1870 and 1880 the gardens and farms and young orchards of Kansas, Nebraska, and other western districts, were ruined again and again. The government sent out several of the wisest entomologists it could employ to study the insects, and they found that these destructive red-legged grasshoppers had their home in the dry foothills of the Rocky Mountains, especially toward the north. They learned a great deal about the habits of the insects, and reported that there seemed no remedy just at hand; but that the more the West was settled and cultivated, the more grass and other food would be provided for the grasshoppers, so that they would not have to make those wide flights, and the more the plowing of the land and burning of rubbish would destroy their eggs, so that gradually the pest would become less and less, until finally it would cease to be troublesome. This has turned out to be true, and already the fear of grasshoppers has departed. The same thing is taking place in Egypt and some other improving countries, which no longer suffer from the plague of locusts as they used to do.
The wonderful walking-stick and the leaf-insects also belong to this order. They are so marvelously like the objects after which they are named that as long as they keep still it is almost impossible to see them. They seem to know this perfectly well, and will remain for hours together without moving, waiting for some unwary insect to come within reach, for they are among the insects of prey. They are found in all the warmer parts of the world.