Don't you often wonder where they come from? The swarms of grasshoppers
in the late summer?
Charlie says he walked across a field last night where he believes there
were as many grasshoppers as there were blades of grass.
Just think of it! and yet they do not seem to do any harm.
In some places, however, they do a great deal of harm.
They come flying in swarms that darken the sun, and they settle on the
trees and the crops and eat up every green thing. There is nothing a
Western farmer dreads so much as the passing of the grasshoppers.
Grasshoppers are funny little fellows, and we like them--when there are
not too many of them.
Summer would not seem quite like summer unless we heard the grasshoppers
shrilling.
There are a great many species of them, and we have placed them in two
divisions,--The Shorthorned Grasshoppers and The Longhorned
Grasshoppers.
[Illustration]