patience to make out what is suggested. Each of our
common insects has one of two clearly defined habits in the matter of
food. Either it eats solid food, which must be made fine before it can
be taken into the mouth, or it feeds upon liquids. These liquids may
be easily accessible like the nectar of flowers, in which case one
sort of mouth will serve; or they may be the juices inside the tissues
of animals and plants, when an entirely different type of mouth must
be employed in their acquisition. Perhaps the most easily found
representative of the biting type of mouth, which breaks up solid
food, will be seen in the common grasshopper. Doubtless each one of my
readers has at some time taken a grasshopper into his hand, and,
holding the tip of his finger against the insect's mouth, has promised
the creature its freedom on condition that it disclosed its
reprehensible habit of chewing tobacco. The grasshopper surely
complied, and I trust the promiser was as good as his word. The
grasshopper's head is so placed that, while it is at the front of its
body, the mouth is directly on the under side of its head, while the
eyes are at the top of the front of its face. Under these
circumstances it cannot see what is going into its mouth, and this
makes an interesting variation of conditions to which it must adapt
itself. The means by which it accomplishes this will be clearer if the
mouth of the grasshopper be compared with our own. Our lips are upper
and lower, but the grasshopper has a front lip and a hind one. The
broad front lip is easily seen at the forward side of the mouth. Just
behind it, serving the purpose of our teeth, is a pair of hard jaws
with horny tips upon them, which serve to break small pieces from its
food. While our jaws and those of all other backboned animals work up
and down, so that we may be said to have an upper and lower jaw, the
grasshopper and all of his insect, crab, or spider relations, which
have jaws at all, have them right and left, and they work from side to
side. Behind these harder mouth parts is found a pair of softer jaws,
each of which has on it a little finger-like feeler. With this pair
the insect holds its food while the hard jaws break it to pieces. The
hind lip follows, and is also provided with short finger-like feelers.
The feelers on the hind lip and on the soft jaw are necessary because
the eyes are so placed as not to be able to see what goes into the
mouth, hence the insect must