The grasshoppers are a very timid family, and are very sensitive to sound. Some say that their long feelers serve them for ears. But that is not true. The garden grasshopper has very small wings. Its color is brownish gray. It likes to live in the garden walls or under the leaves in the borders. Both Mr. and Mrs. Grasshopper sing in this garden family. They keep up fine music for those who like to hear them, as one answers the song of the other. I think we most of us like the cry of the grasshopper. It brings to our mind the warm, dry, sunny days, the time of flowers. Out in the meadow you will find our Old Man, the common great, gray hopper. As the great, green one in the trees is hidden by his color, so is the great, gray one hidden in the grass. His coat is the hue of the half-dry grass, with little tinges of green along it. He seems a very plain insect at first. But watch him and notice the light red and yellowish bands on his legs. He has spots of soot color on his wing cases. When he spreads his wide wings, note the brown and yellow stripes. He is fine enough after all. In the woods, among the pine and fir trees, you will find a light-green, small, slim grasshopper a deal like the garden singer. There is a very handsome, large grasshopper called the wart-biter. The boys in Sweden give him this name, because they think he can cure warts. They think that if he bites a wart, and puts some dark brown juice on it, the wart will go away. The wart-biter is nearly two inches long. It is a green-gray with reddish legs and feet. It lays its eggs in little balls in the earth. In South America there are very large and splendid grasshoppers. Their wings are so gay that when they fly they look much like butterflies. The wings, in flight, cover most of the body. But when you see the large, long legs stretched out behind, and the very long feelers waving to the tips of the wings, you will know that this is a grasshopper. All this brown and black and crimson splendor is the Old Man of the Meadow, with a very fine coat. The grasshopper is not migratory. It does not change its home. It dies near where it was born. Frost and cold kill it. It does not outlive the winter, as butterflies, bees, and wasps do. Grasshoppers appear in great numbers, but they do not go in swarms as locusts do. Each grasshopper lives alone. He does nothing for his neighbor, and his neighbor does nothing for him. When grasshoppers are numerous they damage the grass and the young crops. FOOTNOTES: [14] See Nature Reader, No. 2. Lessons on Ants. LESSON XVIII. THE ROBBER COUSIN. The Old Man of the Meadow is, in his way, like a quiet country gentleman. He roams about the fields, and likes to sing, and is fond of moonlight. He likes the shade, and the cool, still places under the green herbs. He has a fierce cousin, who is a great robber, a kind of land pirate. His name is _locust_.