GRASSHOPPER
796
GRAVITATION
Grass'hopper, a very common jumping insect belonging to the group (Orthoptera) containing crickets, cockroaches, katydids and others. These insects are world-wide in their distribution, and those with short antennae are properly called locusts. The locusts of the Bible and the great clouds of locusts mentioned in history were grasshoppers. In the United States the name locust is improperly given to the seventeen-year cicada. Grasshoppers have four wings, the outer ones hard and the flying wings underneath them folded like plaits of a fan. They have biting jaws, and eat, sometimes insects, but more commonly vegetables. The males make sounds by rubbing the spiny surface of the thighs against the wing-covers; the cracking sound given out by some grasshoppers while flying is due to rubbing the upper surface of the flying wings against the lower surface of the wing-covers. Their eggs are laid in groups in the ground, in fence-posts, logs, stumps etc. The destruction of crops by the small Rocky Mountain locust is historical. These insects appeared in great numbers, and not only destroyed the corn and other crops, but stripped the leaves from the trees. From 1874 to 1876 this insect damaged western agriculture to the extent of more than $200,000,000, working especial harm in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri and Iowa. The United States government appointed an entomological commission in 1877 to study the problem, and these pests were combated by burning over the breeding-grounds, destroying the young in ditches by burning straw and by other means. Of other forms that do much damage, mention may be made of the American locust, which devastates our southern states; and of the differential locust, very injurious to cotton-plantations in Mississippi.
See Reports of the Entomological Commission for 1878-79 and 1880-82; Sanderson: Insects Injurious to Staple Crops; Mary Treat: Injurious Insects of Farm and Garden; Howard : The Insect Book.
Graf tan, Henry, a great Irish patriot and orator, was born at Dublin, July 3, 1746. At seventeen he entered Trinity College, and at twenty-one Middle Temple, London, to study law. In 1772 he was called to the Irish bar, and soon after was elected to parliament, where he took the place of Henry Flood, who had lost his popularity by taking office under the government. The country was in a poor condition on account of loss of trade with America, and the restriction of Irish trade, and he at once set about the effort to reform. He then cherished the idea of a separate parliament, and on April 19, 1780, after fifteen hours' argument and perhaps the best speech of his life, an indefinite adjournment was taken. A month later the Rockingham
ministry apparently acquiesced, but his friend Fox asked for more, and the point for which Grattan so long strove was lost. In 1790 he was returned to parliament for the city of Dublin, and took up the cause of Catholic emancipation, labored heart and soul in the effort, but was overcome by circumstances that ended in the revolution of the United Irishmen in 1798. He retired to private life, broken in health, until in 1806 he appeared in the English house of commons as a member for Dublin, only again to work for his former cause. On May 20, 1820, he crossed from Dublin to make his last appeal, but arrived dying, and expired at London, June 4, 1820. Grattan s figure was small and spare, his face long, thin and slightly marked with smallpox. His gestures in speaking were violent and odd, and his voice of no great power, but he wielded his hearers at will by his energy, passion and overpowering earnestness and. enthusiasm. See Lecky's Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland.
Gratz (grdts), the capital of Styria in Austria, is built on both sides of the River Mur. Its fortress was demolished by the French in 1809. It has many old buildings — the fine Gothic cathedral (built in 1462), a Gothic church (dating from 1283), the university (founded in 1586) and four monasteries of the i6th and i7th centuries. The university has a teaching staff of 147 with 1,971 attending students. In 1481 it repulsed the Hungarians and in 1532 the Turks, but was taken by the French in 1797 and 1809. It has important manufactories of machines, steel goods, rails, railroad-cars, sugar, wine, candles and soap. Population 138,080.
Grav'el. The term gravel is applied to aggregations of small, water-worn stones of any kind. There are no definite limits to the size of the constituents. Fine gravel grades into coarse sand, and coarse gravel grades into shingle or aggregation of cobblestones. Gravel occurs frequently along swift streams and the shores of lakes atil oceans. When cemented into rock, gravel becomes conglomerate.
Gravelotte (grdv'lotf), a village in Lorraine, near Metz, where, on Aug. 18, 1870, the French under Bazaine were defeated by the Germans. The French loss was about 15,000, that of the Germans 20,000.
Gravita' tion, that pioperty of matter in virtue of which every particle in the universe attracts every other particle. The name (from the Latin gravis, heavy) is due to the fact that the most fimiliar illustration of gravitation is th attraetior which the earth exerts upon all bodic at its surface. The force with which "'lie earth attracts any body is called th rwagJtf of that body. About 1665 New OB suspected that it is the attraction pi the earth upon the mooa (or the weiglit of
