Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/637

Rh well known that in Russia this insect appears in such prodigious numbers that the wheels of the vehicles roll crushingly through the masses. Mr. Glover, the entomologist of the Department of Agriculture, states that a new grasshopper has appeared. Besides several larvæ and part of an entire insect found when cleansing the pots in the greenhouse of the department, a pair of these strange creatures, a male and a female, has been obtained. They went lustily to work on the leaves of the coffee-plant, bananas, etc., in the greenhouse, "much in the same manner as is done by our native katydids, by eating holes in the leaves and gnawing away the edges. Their jaws were remarkably strong and sharp, and when the insects were incautiously handled they bit so severely as to draw blood. The male was about 1.75 inch in length from the tip of the cone, or horn on its forehead, to the end of its wing-covers when closed. The female measured 3.05 inches to the end of the ovipositor, which itself was at least 1.25 inch in length. The general color of both male and female was a light pea-green, and the wings were delicately veined with distinct nerves, resembling the venation of leaves. A very marked feature in this insect, when alive, is that the labrum and clypeus are bright yellow, contrasting strongly with the jet-black of the mandibles, which, together with the cone or horn on the top of its head, gives it a remarkable appearance. This cone or horn, which is placed obliquely upward on the top of the forehead, forming a line with the face, is yellow beneath, black at the tip, and ends in an acute point, which is somewhat bent downward at its summit. No insect resembling it having hitherto been found in this neighborhood, there is but little doubt that it has lately been imported with or on some foreign plants sent from South America, or the West Indies; and, as many exotic plants have been received from Balize, British Honduras, it is probable that this grasshopper came in the egg-state, on some of the plants from that locality, and was hatched out last summer in the greenhouse. This fact alone admonishes us how careful we should be when importing new and valuable plants from abroad, for, if a large insect, nearly two inches in length, and fully the size of a katydid, can be so easily introduced, how much more readily the small and inconspicuous noxious insects hidden under the bark would be likely to escape notice, until they had perpetuated their species, so as to become partially naturalized and injurious to our plants! There is no danger, however, that this grasshopper will spread, and, as it is apparently very tender and accustomed to a tropical climate, most probably it would not be able to withstand the rigors of our winters in the open air, and as all were killed or caught as soon as seen in the greenhouse, there is very little probability of any being left to perpetuate their race." Mr. Thomas has described this insect under the name of Copiophora mucronata, in the "Canadian Entomologist."

More curious and perhaps more interesting to scientific consideration is the appearance, in the hot-houses of the Agricultural Department,