Now, there was an old saying that when the grasshopper from the Exchange and the dragon from Bow Church should meet, the streets of London would run with blood.
In the following cut is a specimen of these--a representation of a grasshopper driving a chariot, copied in 1802 from a Pompeian work for an English traveler.
Its appearance in large numbers always coincides with the time of the grasshopper plague;--a fact which was first observed in 1814.
He states that, so long as the grasshoppers are not fully developed, the bird feeds on all sorts of insects; but as soon as the grasshopper is sufficiently matured, this insect forms its sole food, and is pursued with great eagerness.
When a flight of these birds descends upon a grasshopper infested district, it consumes an enormous number of these insects, and that, in places where human defences can do nothing; in this consists the value of its actions.
Thus, in the year 1907 great numbers of Rose Starlings appeared on the well-known Puerta of Hortshágy where just at that time the grasshopper plague was raging.
The Hobby does not despise a grasshopper as food, in the twilight a moth does not come amiss; indeed it has lately been observed that it sometimes snaps at bees.
The most celebrated one among these I quoted in a former lecture--the poem about the little Greek girl Myro who made a tomb for her grasshopper and cried over it.
There is not much else of note about the grasshopper and the cricket in the works of the great English poets.
Some of them treat the subject from the old Greek standpoint--indeed the beautiful poem of Heredia upon the tomb of a grasshopper is perfectly Greek, and reads almost like a translation from the Greek.
What an ungainly creature he looks as we draw in nearer, all legs and clumsy head,--a regular grasshopper on stilts!
Before two hours have passed the grasshopper has become a burden, and it is 102° in the shade, and no shade to be had.
The Grasshopper order supplied me with a second series of victims: Green Grasshoppers as long as one's finger, large-headed Locusts, Ephippigerae.
The Cicada is the Cigale, an insect akin to the Grasshopper and found more particularly in the South of France.
The twograsshopper springs have been replaced with two elliptical springs.
Some are not very unlike eggs of theGrasshopper and Dartford Warblers; others, again, are almost counterparts of the eggs of Franklinia buchanani.
This is the familiar "churring" or vibrating noise, long continued, and putting one in mind of the monotonous reel of the Grasshopper Warbler, so far as its pertinacity is concerned.
I've played thegrasshopper for a few weeks--from this time on I'm the busy ant.
I recalled the fable of the grasshopper who, having wasted the summer hours in singing, was mendicant to the ant.
So it was settled, and thegrasshopper went forth into the fields and toiled as hard as any slave.
Raw as I was, inconspicuous as a grasshopper by the roadside, I still had something in me which responded to the call of "the prophet of San Francisco," and yet I had no definite intention of becoming a missionary.
The Grasshopper jumped only half as high; but he leaped into the King's face, who said that was ill-mannered.
It was thus that the Flea and the Grasshopper gave an account of themselves, and thought they were quite good enough to marry a Princess.
I don't think she spoke ten words to-night without having a grasshopper for one of them.
On showing it the portrait of a cat and a wasp, it became much terrified; but when the figure of a grasshopper or beetle was placed before it, it precipitated itself on the picture, as if to seize them.
This locust or grasshopper is generally from two and a half to four inches in length, but specimens sometimes appear five inches long; and it may be conceived what an enormous amount of food such monsters must consume.
The grasshopper sparrow is smaller than the English sparrow.
It has a cry which sounds like a grasshopper in the grass.
Three butterflies who were acting as judges decided to award the prize to the grasshopper because he was smaller.
A great fat young grasshopper and a young robin entered a hopping race.
Business would suffer; it would be as dead here as a grasshopper after a prairie fire while readjustment to new conditions shaped.
He was a granger, anyhow, a fencer of the range, an interloper who had come into their ancient domain like others of his grasshopper tribe to fence up the grazing lands and drive them from the one calling that they knew.
The great green Grasshopper was in hearing, if not in sight, the veritable "hopper" whose long threadlike antennae and wedge shaped head you have taught us to recognize as marking the true from the so called grasshopper or locust.
A Spider Drawing up a Swathed Grasshopperto its Leafy Den, "Hand Over Hand.
Wrapped up as Tightly as a Captive Grasshopper Swathed by a Big Garden Spider.
They blindfolded his eyes, covered his nostrils, and veiled his face, until they were wrapped up as tightly as a captive grasshopper swathed by a big garden spider.
Moving like an animated streak, one of them would pounce upon a grasshopper and at once dodge back to its burrow or into the shelter of some huckleberry brush that grew upon the knoll.
Alighting, thegrasshopper had crawled along the ground.
Crawling beneath a dead weed that matched its drab color exactly, the grasshopper was remaining perfectly still.
The load of life is so heavy that in order to draw it, you want a team stronger than one made up of a masculine grasshopper and a feminine butterfly.
I never saw it muster courage enough to attack either a Grasshopper or a Mantis.
Audouin showed it the portraits of a cat and a wasp; at these it became much terrified, whereas at the sight of a figure of a grasshopper or beetle it precipitated itself on the picture as if to seize the objects there represented.
The green grasshopper or locust leaps; the fair-haired moon leaps.
I also find the wedding between ant and grasshopper in a very popular, but as yet unpublished Tuscan song.
The grasshopper goes into a field of linen; the ant begs for a thread to make herself aprons and shirts for the wedding; then the grasshoppersays he wishes to marry her.
The grasshopper goes into a field of vetches; the ant asks for ten vetches, to cook four in a stew, and to put six upon the spit for the wedding-dinner.
The ant asks the grasshopper whether he desires her for his wife, and recommends him, if he does not, to look after his own affairs, that is, to leave her alone.
And yet thegrasshopper ought to be the diviner par excellence.
The first shock over, the staff of the "Grasshopper and Ant" bustled about.
Wyatt, as generalissimo of the expedition, walked into the "Grasshopper and Ant," the leading inn of the town.
There has been a saying current among the ancient sibyls, who treasure up these things, that when the grasshopper on the top of the Exchange shook hands with the dragon on the top of Bow Church Steeple, fearful events would take place.
One of these, though inferior in size and no less sparingly equipped, greatly surpasses the Grasshopper in nocturnal rhapsodies.
The Grasshopper then makes a banquet off this fertilizing capsule, drains it slowly of its contents, and devours it bit by bit; for a long time she chews and rechews the gummy morsel and ends by swallowing it all down.
In the north, where she abounds, the Green Grasshopper would not find the dish which attracts her so strongly here.
I ran up and saw a Grasshopper gutting the belly of a struggling Cicada.
The Green Grasshopperresembles the English: she dotes on underdone meat seasoned with jelly.
The Grasshopper rarely fails with the sharp pliers of her powerful jaws to disembowel her capture, which, being unprovided with weapons, confines itself to crying out and kicking.
