Having the spiny weapons of the legs in mind, I imagined that those limbs would moult in scales and patches, or that the sheathing would rub off like a dead scarf-skin.

How completely the reality surpassed my anticipations! From the spurs and spines of the sheath, which is as thin as the finest gold-beaters' skin, the spurs and spines of the leg, which make it a most formidable weapon, capable of cutting a piece of soft wood, emerge without the slightest display of violence, without a hitch of any kind; and the empty skin remains in place.

Still clinging by its claws to the top of the wire cover, it is untorn, unwrinkled, uncreased.

Even the magnifying-glass fails to show a trace of rough usage.

Such as the skin was before the cricket left it, so it is now.