Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1920-07-22
Grasshopper Pest j. ,hc v-ess.

Once more the ravenouS graSShop-
per is wreaking devastation upon
Western fields, and the plague is be-
coming so destructive in parts Of Texas
that Federal aid is being employed to
check it, according to newspaper dis
patches.
Writing to the National Geographic
Society, David Fairchild describes this
fascinating, il ruthless, creature as fol-
lows:
"The young king grasshopper is
probably twenty days old, and its
wings have not developed but it can
| jump a hundred times its length,
whereas man can scarcely cover three
times his length at leap. When its
wings grow and its internal air sacs
| fill with air it can sail away for miles.
! One representative OF this great fam
lily can sail for a thousand miles be-
fore the wind, and they go in such
numbers that they make a cloud 1000
square miles in extent.
OTIS great front lip hides pair Of
jaws as effective as hay chopper, and
il has an appetite as voracious as that
of hippopotamus. Their voracious-
ness and these jaws are what have
made several of its relatives the
plague of mankind. They multiply
in such numbers as to battle all cal
culation, and every living green thing
/ for thousands of square miles disap
pears down their threats, leaving the
country they infest desolate. The
great famine of Egypt, mentioned in
the book of Exodus; the grasshopper
years of Kansas, which ruined thou
sands of families on our plains, and
more recent devastation in Argentina
and South Africa are examples of the
tremendous effects which the migra-
tory locusts have had upon the hap
piness of mankind.
stands looking so inquiring at one with
his varicolored eyes, each of which
is composed of hundreds Of facets,
cannot help thinking that he repre-
. IL
and actually more dangerous than the
East African monsters of our school
biographies.
"A baby creature, scarcely two weeks
since it issued from a grasshopper
egg, and yet with two moults behind
1.-TWO bright green baby skins cast
off
Imagine looking forward, as this
baby creature does, to the day when
the pads on its back shall have grown
so long and parchment-like that it can
leave its hopping terrestrial existence
and sail away across the fields. In
til that time, however, it must be con-
tent with its six springy legs, pushing
its way among the blades of grass,
tasting everything green and eating
what it likes, and hiding from its enc
mics when moulting time comes round
"A young chick finds itself shut IN
side the eggshell and must work its
way out alone, but the young grass
hoppers, when they hatch out, find
themselves-the whole nestful-shut
in hardened case in the ground, madl
by their mother, and it takes a half
dozen Of hem working together to dis
lodge the lid which shuts them in.
when the young grasshopper
energies from the egg it is very small,
indeed-a wingless, helpless little crea-
ture, all legs and mouth
sit passes through successive ages,
or stages, as they are called, each one
of which is separated from the other
by moult or casting of its outer shell.
These mouths take place at fixed
periods, and as the insect finds itself
restrained by its firm, inelastic skele-
ton longitudinal rent occurs along
the back, and the insect, soft and dan
gerously helpless, struggles out of the
old skin inclosed in a new but delicate
cuticle, which takes some time to
harden and color up.
whether this creature has a per- |
Sonallty or not may be forever extreme
y difficult for humans to decide. Its
eyes that look like cows eyes really |
cast a thousand images on special
KIND OF brain so difficult from our own
that we cannot understand it, and then
besides these great big eyes it has three
others. Its Short-ringed horns are not
horns AT all, but sense organs of so
complicated nature that we do not
yet known certainly whether they are
organs of smell or not, and it is sup (
posed that they may be the seat of sense /
organs that we humans do not have