Grasshopper
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Grasshopper. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an insect allied to the locust, cricket, and katydid. The dusty jumpers commonly called grasshoppers are locusts. The common grasshoppers of the meadows may be known from locusts by a green, transparent body and a pair of long, slender, delicate feelers which extend forward, or backward in some species beyond the tip of the abdomen. In general, the life of the grasshopper is like that of his shorthorned relative, the locust, to the article on which the reader is directed. We add an extract relative to the grasshopper, from each of two rival sonnets, the first by Keats, the second by Leigh Hunt: The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the grasshopper's--he takes the lead In summer luxury,--he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass. See Locust Gravity, Specific, the weight of a given substance as compared with that of an equal bulk of some other substance taken as a standard. The standard for solids and liquids is water; for gases, air or hydrogen. Thus, when we say the specific gravity of alcohol is .81 and silver 10.4, we mean that a cubic inch, for instance, of alcohol, weighs .81 as much as a cubic inch of water; and that a cubic inch of silver weighs 10.4 as much as a cubic inch of water. The comparative weights of a number of common substances are given in the following TABLE OF SPECIFIC GRAVITIES. Agate 2.6 Alcohol (grain) 0 deg 81 Alum 1.7 Aluminum 2.7 Arsenic 5.7 Beech 8 Benzine, 20 deg 87 Boxwood 9 Brass 8.3 Bricks 1.7 Bronze 8.8 Copper 8.8 Cork 24 Diamond 3.5 Emerald 2.7 Feldspar 2.5 German-silver 8.5 Glass (crown) 2.5 Glass (flint) 3.6 Gold 19.3 Granite 2.7 Graphite 2.3 Ice 9 Iron (cast) 7.2 Iron (wrought) 7.7 Ivory 1.9 Lead 11.3 Marble 2.7 Mercury, 0 deg 13.596 Mica 2.8 Milk, 0 deg 1.032 Olive oil, 0 deg 92 Paraffine 9 Platinum (wire) 21.4 Quartz 2.6 Rock salt 2.2 Sea water, 0 deg 1.026 Silver 10.4 Slate 2.8 Steel 7.8 Sulphur 2.0 Tallow 9 Tin 7.3 Turpentine, 0 deg 89 Zinc 7.1
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the name of various leaping insects of the order Orthoptera nearly akin to the locusts. They are characterized by very long and slender legs, the thighs of the hinder legs being large and adapted for leaping, by large and delicate wings, and by the wingcovers extending far beyond the extremity of the abdomen. Grasshoppers form an extensive group of insects, and are distinguished by the power which they possess of leaping to a considerable distance, and by the stridulous or chirping noise the males produce by rubbing their wing covers together.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's usage in 1910 is the reverse of today's: it insisted that "the dusty jumpers commonly called grasshoppers are locusts" and reserved "grasshopper" for the green, long-feelered meadow insects. Modern usage does the opposite — grasshopper now means the short-horned Acrididae (locusts are simply grasshoppers in swarming phase), while the long-antennaed green insects Aiton's described are called katydids or bush-crickets. The order Orthoptera that Collier's named in 1921 has since been split into the two suborders Caelifera (grasshoppers and locusts) and Ensifera (katydids and crickets), and crickets are no longer grouped with grasshoppers as closely as these accounts imply. One species both entries would have known well, the Rocky Mountain locust of the American plains, has since gone extinct — it was last collected around 1902, only a few years before Aiton's went to press.
Written for this edition, 2026.