Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1880 — The Grasshopper. [ARTICLE]

The Grasshopper.

Children, do you ever stop to think that nothing was made in vain? If not, why not? We can look around us and see fleas, beetles, mosquitoes, ants and many other living things which seem to have no useful mission in life, but when we think that Nature had any time to fool away in experiments we are sadly mistaken. She knew what she was about when she gave a bed-bug four rows of teeth and a two-forty gait, and she had her eyes wide open when she made doqble joints in the hind legs of a flea. This insect which I hold up before you is a grasshopper. In some localities, where they have no dollar stores or street sprinklers, he is termed a locust, but he is the same bird under all names. These insects date back to the time when the first rail fence on earth was built, and they were only two weeks eating up the last sliver of it. They are like those chaps who want to borrow five dollars for a day or two —scattered all over the world. Ther knock their heads against the Pyramids of Egypt, and go in swimming on the coast of California. They make a noonday lunch from the Indian’s wigwam, and they eat supper in the palaces of kings. Few great men seem to have given much attention to the study 01 the grasshopper, although there is lots of him to study. He hasn't got as many legs as he might have, but ne is not the grasshopper to sneak off and pout over that. You will see that the number he has are unusually long and stoutly jointed, and so spread out that when he comes down on anything there are no slips and sprains in store for him. If man had the comparative length of limb given to the grasshopper, he could see a woman with a red sash-ribbon on seven miles up Woodward avenue. If his limbs had the comparative strength of a grasshopper’s, he could kick in a hundred saloon doors in an evening, and not feel a bit weary. These hind legs are hinged, for jumping. Nature meant that every grasshopper should jump a full ten feet, and where any of them come down short it is because of a lazy disposition. Observe his eyes. They are so set that he can see in all directions at once. While chewing away on the handle of a barn-shovel he can look for late corn with his left eye, and squint for the farmer’s dog with his right. When you imagine that you can get the skulk on a grasshopper you are badly left. If man could see as well as this insect, his wife would never be able to surprise him while walking in the park with another lady.

In addition to his long legs the grasshopper has wings, and is, therefore, enabled to keep track of things over a vast extent of countiy. The idea of pinning a chap like him down to one townsnip and one grade of society would be absurd. When tired of walking around over the stubble-fields some old hopper gives a signal toot on his horn, and away goes the whole drove, sometimes in one way and again in another. There is always some one on hand to estimate the exact number of a cloud of these insects. It is generally the postmaster or some one else good in figures, and the number is always given as twelve billions. If there happen to be two or three over they are some lame or blind old insects not worth counting. Grasshoppers were built to be hungry. They can eat seven or eight square meals per day and pick away at the bones of a grindstone between times. They would no doubt thrive much better on a steady diet of raisin-cake and plum-pudding, but grasshoppers cannot nave just what they want in this world. He is well up on botany, knows all about cereals and grasses, has an eye for natural history, and take him as a whole he can be got along with much better than a man two-thirds drunk.— Detroit Free Press.