“Really and truly. You couldn’t begin to count them, and do you know, if the earth was to grow quite bare, with only one living plant left on it, the seeds from that one plant could make it green again in a very few years. But if certain insects were left without other creatures to eat and keep them down, the poor old earth would soon be bare once more. So you see there must be laws to fix all these things. Nature balances one set of creatures against the other, so there will not be too many of any kind.”
Ruth had listened in open-eyed astonishment. Surely this was a very wise grasshopper.
“You know a great deal,” she managed to say at last.
“Yes, I do,” was the answer. “I heard two men say the things I’ve just told you. They were walking across this meadow, and I listened and remembered. You see, I believe in learning even from men. But do listen to the concert—we are right in the middle of it.”
They certainly _were_ in the middle of it. The zip, zip, zip, zee-e-ee-e of the meadow grasshoppers seemed to come from every part of the sunny field, while the shorthorns, or flying locusts, were gently fiddling under the grass blades, their wing covers serving for strings, and their thighs as fiddle bows, and the field crickets, not to be outdone, were scraping away with the finely notched veins of the fore wings upon their hind wings.
The longhorns were also there, some in green, others in brown or gray, all drumming away on the drum heads set in their fore wings.
“You would hear katydid too,” said Mr. Grasshopper, “only he refuses to sing in the day. He hides under the leaves of the trees while it is light, and comes out at night. If you think _me_ wise, I don’t know what you would say of him. He is such a solemn-looking chap, always dressed in green, and his wing covers are like leaves. You might think him afraid if you saw him wave his long antennæ, but he isn’t. He is curious, that’s all. It is a high sort of curiosity, too, like mine—a wish to learn. I suppose you know we don’t make our music with our mouths?” he asked suddenly. “Well, that is something,” he added, as Ruth nodded “Yes.”
“I sing with the upper part of my wing covers, but my cousins, the shorthorns, sing with their hind legs. Why do you laugh? Aren’t legs as good to sing with as anything else?”