THE LOCUST OF NORTH WESTERS IND1 I 217 



during the cold weather, waiting for the warm showers to soften the hard sandy 

 soil in which they lay their eggs. These showers come in the latter part of tho 

 winter rains of the North-West Punjab, and in the beginning of the south-west 



monsoon in Western Rajputana. Egg-laving therefore takes place about March 

 and April in the North- West Punjab, and about June and July in Rajputana. 

 Each female after copulation lavs an agglutinated mass of from fifty to one hun- 

 dred eggs, about the size of small dry grains of husked rice, in a hole about an 

 inch deep, which she bores with her horny ovipositor in the sand. She may 

 perhaps lay more than one of these masses, but it is believed that neither of the 

 parents long survive the laying of the eggs, though the yellow individuals, often 

 found in small numbers amongst the young salmon-pink locusts which chiefly 

 compose the autumn flights, have been supposed to be survivors from the flights of 

 parent insects which are found in the spring. The eggs hatch in about three 

 weeks, and from them emerge young wingless locusts, which hop along the ground 

 devouring the crops, and gradually increasing in size until they are about one or 

 two months old, when they acquire wings. Shortly after this they take flight, and 

 fly about the country in swarms, which descend at intervals to devour the crops, 

 and often penetrate right across India. Those insects which leave the dry sandy 

 country of their home and penetrate into the damper regions of the North-West 

 Provinces, the Central Provinces, Bombay, Bengal, Madras, and Assam seem for 

 the most part to die off without ovipositing. The flights, however, which remain 

 in the drier regions of the Punjab and Rajputana are believed to lay their eggs 

 towards the latter part of the rains, in August, September, or October, the young 

 locusts acquiring wings in the beginning of the cold weather and forming the 

 flights which oviposit in the following year, while the parent insects gradually die 

 off' like their own progenitors in the previous spring. 



Although nearly every district in North- West India has been visited, at some 

 Damage occasioned. time or other during the past two years, by flights 



square miles in extent, and sometimes so thick as to 

 hide the sun from sight, as they passed in the air, and to break down with their 

 sheer weight thick branches of the trees upon which they settled, yet upon the 

 whole no very serious damage seems to have been occasioned to the crops, though 

 no doubt sparsely-inhabited areas, such as parts of Western Rajputana, have in 

 some cases sustained considerable injury. The explanation of this lies in the fact 

 that in the case of the winged insects the flights usually passed rapidly from place 

 to place, so that a very large number of districts were visited by a comparatively 

 small number of swarms, which usually only stopped in one place long enough to 

 damage a small area, and then passed on to levy contributions elsewhere. The 

 result of this has been that the very large amount of total damage, that must 

 have been occasioned from first to last, has been spread over too wide an area to 

 be particularly felt in any single district. In the case of the wingless insects on the 

 other hand, which are known to be capable of most disastrous ravages, eggs were 

 only laid in a few cases in British districts, and even then not in ovciwhelmin< 



