KATYDIDS, LOCUSTS, AND GRASSROPPERS.
LAST summer a little girl became much interested in a katydid that lived in a tree near her window. The last thing she heard at night was "Katy did, Katy didn't," growing fainter and fainter as she grew more sleepy, until the next thing she knew the sun shining in at the window told her it was time to get up, and that her "gentleman in green," as she called him, had gone to sleep for the day. Probably one reason why she cared so much about the katydid was that her name was Katy, and she liked to fancy that he knew that, and was talking about something she had done. She sometimes joined in softly saying, "Katy didn't" when he asserted that "Katy did," though her uncle told her that among the katydids the men did all the talking. When the days began to grow short and cold, Katy missed the voice of her "gentleman in green," and went to Uncle John to find out where the katydids went in the winter. She felt really sorry when he said that their lives were only one summer long, and that her friend was probably dead, but became very much interested when Uncle John, cutting a twig from a tree, showed her where the mother katydid had prepared a smooth place, and fastened securely in rows some gray eggs that would stay there all winter, and in the spring break open at one end, as the young katydid pushed his way into the world. Katy thought it wonderful that the eggs could stand the cold snows and ice of winter. But when this spring her uncle showed her the young locusts coming up out of hard ground, through which they had bored their way with ease, and told her that they were "seventeen-year locusts," so called because the eggs were laid in the ground seventeen years ago, where they had been ever since, and that it took that long time for them to hatch, she thought the locusts more strange than the katydids. She could hardly understand some of Uncle John's stories of the harm they had done in Eastern countries, especially585when he said they were once so numerous as to block a river in its course. But as she saw how even the young locusts ate every green thing they could reach, she could see why they should have been named from two Latin words meaning "a place destroyed by fire," because places where they had been in great numbers looked as if swept by a fire. Uncle John said he had never seen such an army of locusts as is spoken of in the Bible (Joel 2:25), but that one August when he was in Dakota, where the wheat was ripe and ready to cut, the crop large, and the farmers happy, thinking it would bring them a good deal of money, he noticed men looking anxiously toward the sun. Asking why, one said: "See those things high in the air that look like thistledown? Those are grasshoppers, and if the wind changes, they will come down and ruin our crops." No wonder they looked anxiously. The wind did change that night, and, though it changed back again in about twenty-four hours, taking the grasshoppers on again, they had in one day ruined all the crops, eaten every green leaf, and left the farmers poor and discouraged. "These grasshoppers," Uncle John added, "are nearly related to the seventeen-year locusts, whose family name is really Cicada, and to your friends, the katydids." "Well," said Katy, "I am glad the 'gentleman in green' wasn't so wicked as some of his cousins, but I'm sorry he belongs to such a bad family."—Selected.