Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/58

 The insects belong to the class of the Arthropoda known as the Insecta, or Hexapoda. The word “insect,” as we have seen, means “in-cut,” while “hexapod” means “six-legged”—either term, then, doing very well for insects. The centipedes (Fig. 14 C) are the Myriapoda, or many-footed arthropods; the crabs (A), shrimps, lobsters, and others of their kind are the Crustacea, so called because most of them have hard shells; the spiders (B) are the Aracknida, named after that ancient Greek maiden so boastful of her spinning that Minerva turned her into a spider; but some arachnids, such as the scorpion, do not make webs. The principal groups of insects are the orders. The grasshopper and its relatives constitute an order; the beetles are an order; the moths and butterflies are another order; the flies another; the wasps, bees, and ants still another. The grasshopper's order is called the Orthoptera, the word meaning “straight-wings,” but, again, not significant in all cases, though serving very well as a name. The order is a group of related families, and, in the Orthoptera, the grasshoppers, or locusts, make one family, the katydids another, the crickets a third; and all these insects, together with some others less familiar, may be said to be the grasshopper's cousins.

The orthopteran families are notable in many ways, some for the great size attained by their members, some for their remarkable forms, and some for musical talent. While this chapter will be devoted principally to the cousins of the grasshopper, a few things of interest may still be said about the grasshopper himself, in addition to what was given in the preceding chapter.

The family of the grasshoppers, or locusts, is the Acrididae. All the members are much alike in form and habits, though some have long wings and some short wings, and some reach the enormous size of nearly six inches in