Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/33

can blame probably on the early settlers of our States, who bestowed upon the creatures encountered in the New World the names of animals familiar at home; but, having no zoologists along for their guidance, they made many errors of identification. Scientists have sought to establish a better state of nomenclatural affairs by creating a set of international names for all living things, but since

Fig. 2. The end of the body of a male and a female grasshopper
The body, or abdomen, of a male (A) is bluntly rounded; that of the female (B) bears two pairs of thick prongs, which constitute the egg-laying organ, or ovipositor (Ovp)

their names are in Latin, or Latinized Greek, they are seldom practicable for everyday purposes.

Knowing now that a grasshopper is a locust, it only needs to be said that a true locust is any grasshopperlike insect with short horns, or antennae (see Frontispiece). A similar insect with long slender antennae is either a katydid (Figs. 23, 24), or a member of the cricket family (Fig. 39). If you will collect and examine a few specimens of locusts, which we will proceed to call grasshoppers, you may observe that some have the rear end of the body smoothly rounded and that others have the body ending in four horny prongs. The second kind are females (Fig. 2 B); the others (A) are males and may be disregarded for the present. It is one of the provisions of nature that whatever any creature is compelled by its instinct to do, for the doing of that thing it is provided with appropriate tools. Its tools, however, unless