Norwich bulletin., 1920-08-02
GRAsSROPPERs AT WORK
 IN THE WEST

GRASSROPPERS AT WORK
 IN THE WEST
 Once more the ravenous grosshopper is wreaking devastation upon western fields, and the plea que is becoming so destructive in parts of TeXIs that eed- eral aid is being employed to check it, newspaper dispatches statA.
 Writing to the National Geographic society, David Fairchild describes this fascinating, if ruthless, creature as fol- lows:
 "The young king grasshopper is probably 20 days old. and it's wings have not developed, but it can jump hundred times it's length, whereas men can scarcely cover three times his length at a leap. When it's wings grow and it's internal air sacs fill with air it can sail away for miles. One representative of this great family can sail for a thousand miles before the wind, and they go in such numbers that they make a cloud 2.O00 square miles in extent
 Its great front lip hides a pair of jaws as effective as d hay chopper, and it has an appetite as yoracious as that of a hippopotamus. The voracious- ness and these jaws are what have made several Of it's relatives the plague of mankind. They multiply in such numbers as to baf1e all calculation, and ever living green thing for thou sands of square miles disappears down their throats. leaving the country they infest desoIate. The great famine of Egypt mentioned in the book of Exo- dus; the grasshopper years of Kan sas, which ruined thousands of fam n1 devastation in Argentina and South Africa are examples of the tremendous effects which the migratory locusts have had upon the happiness of man kind.
 "As this young king grasshopper stands looking so quiringly at one with his varicolored eyes, each af which is composed of hundreds of facets, cannot help thinking that he represents a creature quite as fascinating and actually more dangerous than the East African monsters of our school geog raphies.
 "A baby creature, scarcely two weeks since it issued from a grass hopper egg, and yet with two moults behind 1.-two bright green baby skins cast off!
 Imagine looking forward as this
  the pads on it's back shall have grown so long and parchment like that it can leave it's hopping terrestrial exist ence and sail away across the fields. Until that time, hoover. it must be content with it's six springy legs, push ing it's way among the blades of grass, tasting everything and eating what it likes, and hiding from it's enemies when mouIting time come around "A young chick finds itself shut in side the egg shell and must work it's way out alone, but the young grass hoppers when they hatch out find themselves the whole nestful-shut l in a hardened case in the ground made 1 by their mother, and it takes a half dozen of them working together to dislodge the lid which shuts them in.
 ''When the young igrasshopper emerges from the egg, it is very small | indeed-a wingless, helpless little creature, all legs and mouth.
 l "'It passes throuh successive ages, or stages. as they are called, each one of which is separated from the other by a moult or casting of it's outer shell. r. .fThese mouts take place at fiXed periods and as the insect finds itself restrained by it's firm, inelastic skele- l q, l0NSlIuulIldl l the back. and the insect, soft and dangerously helpless, struggles out ot the old skin in a new but delicate cu- | ticIe. which takes some time to harden and color up.
 1 Whether this creature has a person. ality or not may be forever, exeremely difficult for humans to decide. It's eyes that look like cows eyes really cast a thousand images on special kind of brain. so different 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 a nature that we do not yet know. certainly whether they are organs of smell or not and 1t IS supposed that they may be the seat of sense organs that we humans do not | have.
 Tn front of the great thighs embed ded on each side of the body, are the so-called ears, tuned no doubt to catch vibrations of the air far too delicate or too frequent for our ears.
 "The jumping legs of the creature are filled with powerful muscles, which when they exand can hurl it through the air and enable it to escape from | it's enemies. On the inner side, along th lower rib of the wing. is the musical | instrument. It is a row of hard, bead like projections, which are very highly deyeloped in the males, but not at all i III the females When the edge f the wing Is scraped over these projections l a musical sound is made. It would 1 seem to be the case. as with SO many | birds, that only the male can sing, the | female being mute.
 
 Housewives' Boycott-A butcher shol in the Smithfield district announced by 2 plaeard that the ring is broken and pric' | es are back at the old level. It is doubtful whether there was any ring tc put up the price of home-killed meat What happened was that the farmers held back their cattle and sheep unti control was removed, in the expectation | that butchers and the public would bt ready to pay extfavagantly for the un wdnted luxury, Some of the butchers wholesale and retail joined in the game | and have burnt their fingers Most