138 Cockroaches, Locusts, Grasshoppers, and Crickets 



hand to feed the millions of young which hatched each spring. So, after 

 exhausting the scanty wild herbage of their breeding-grounds, and develop- 

 ing to their winged stage, hosts of locusts would rise high into the air until 

 they were caught by the great wind-streams bearing southeast, and, with 

 parachute-like wings expanded and air-sacs in the body stretched to their 

 fullest, would be borne for a thousand miles to the rich grain-fields of the 



FIG. 170. The two-striped locust, Melanoplus bivittatus, female. 

 (After Lugger; natural size indicated by line.) 



Mississippi Valley. As far east as the middle of Iowa and Missouri and 

 south to Texas these great swarms would spread; and once settled to ground 

 and started at their chief business, that of eating, not a green thing escaped. 

 First the grains and grasses; then the vegetables and bushes; then the 

 leaves and fresh twigs and bark of trees! A steady munching was audible 

 over the doomed land! And this munching was the devouring of dollars. 

 Fifty millions of dollars were eaten in the seasons of 1874-76 alone. 



