Nevertheless I have always felt that there was something fishy about the grasshopper’s back legs. I mean, why _should_ he wave his legs about when he is stridulating? My own theory is that it is purely due to the nervous excitement produced by the act of singing. The same phenomena can be observed in many singers and public speakers. I do not think myself that we need seek for a more elaborate hypothesis. The _Encyclopædia Britannica_, of course, says that “the stridulation or song in the _Acridiidæ_ is produced by friction of the hind legs against portions of the wings or wing-covers,” but that is just the sort of statement which the scientific man thinks he can pass off on the public with impunity. Considering that stridulation takes place about every ten seconds, I calculate that the grasshopper must require a new set of wings every ten days. It would be more in keeping with the traditions of our public life if the scientific man simply confessed that he was baffled by this problem of the grasshopper’s back legs. Yet, as I have said, if a public speaker may fidget with his back legs while he is stridulating, why not a public grasshopper? The more I see of science the more it strikes me as one large mystification. But I ought to have mentioned that “the _Acridiidæ_ have the auditory organs on the first abdominal segment,” while “the _Locustidæ_ have the auditory organ on the _tibia_ of the first leg.” In other words, one kind of grasshopper hears with its stomach and the other kind listens with its leg. When a scientific man has committed himself to that kind of statement he would hardly have qualms about a little invention like the back-legs legend.