Locust

a family of insects allied to the grasshopper and the cricket. The locust has short antennae--shorter than its body This is perhaps the readiest method of telling a locust from a grasshopper. The abdomen of the female is prolonged into a hollow tube or ovipositor. In late summer the locust bores an oval or cylindrical place in the ground with its ovipositor, sometimes in old wood. It lines the cavity with a gummy, rain-proof substance, fills the hole with eggs arranged with the utmost nicety, and plugs up the entrance. By digging up a bare place by the roadside in autumn these rolls of eggs may be found. In prairie countries a field of freshly plowed sod is a favorite place in which to congregate and lay eggs. Plowing, or any other method that exposes the eggs to weather or buries them beyond the reach of the sun, destroys them. When undisturbed, the eggs remain in these nests over winter. In spring the young hoppers appear, looking for all the world like their parents, except that they are small and are without wings. They eat green vegetation and grow rapidly. They molt several times. The male locust is able to make a rasping noise by rubbing his hind legs against the outer surface of his wing covers. This is supposed to be done for the benefit of his mate, to whom the music is pleasing.

Several locusts are worth especial mention, though nearly all go under the popular name of grasshopper. The Carolina locust, our largest species, is one and one-half to two inches long, and is common throughout the United States and Canada. It is a dusty hopper, fond of dry roads. When it flies it shows a pair of broad, black hind wings edged with a margin of yellow. The male of the clouded locust, also of good size and abundant in meadows, may be recognized by a crackling sound made by rubbing his wings together when he flies. The redlegged locust is common all over the United States, except in the highlands of the West, where its place is taken by a similar insect, the migratory Rocky Mountain locust, the pest of Western grain fields. Like the army worm, the young hoppers of this species travel in long belts, devouring as they go. When full winged, they rise in swarms. Countless--literally countless millions--fill the air like snowflakes. They fly or drift long distances, and descend when night or unfavorable weather overtakes them. If a flight of locusts descends on a farm, grain and corn fields are reduced to mere stalks in a few hours. Trees are stripped of foliage, and the locusts even scrape the lint from a weatherbeaten board fence until it has a new look. If the swarm encounters fine weather it is likely to rise the next day and go on, but if it remains awhile, and the females fill the soil with their cocoon-like pockets of eggs, the chances are that the young will destroy a second crop the following season. Locusts are apt to confine their eggs to especially favorable plots of ground. By ploughing, harrowing, and exposing the eggs to the weather, many are destroyed, and skillful methods have been devised for destroying the young before they get far from their hatching ground. Fortunately this locust cannot survive more than a generation or two away from its high, semi-arid native home.

Locusts are common in Arabia and Africa. The natives catch them for food and eat them fried in butter. Sometimes they are dried in the sun and are ground into a meal used for baking cakes or to thicken soup. The poor of Southern Russia cure them in smoke, like fish. The Jews used to fry locusts in sesame oil. The prophet Joel likens their flight to "the noise of a flame that devoureth the stubble," and the land they pass through is "as the garden of Eden before thee and behind thee a desolate wilderness."

See Grasshopper; Cricket