256 'JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1891. 



Central Provinces (Hoshangabad, Seoni, Chindwara, Nagpur, Bhandara, Jabalpur, 

 Bilaspur, Raipur, Saugor, and Balaghat) ; and thence eastwards into Bengal; 

 southwards, through Berar and Hyderabad, into the Ganjam, Kurnool, Cuddapah, 

 and North Arcot districts of Madras ; and westwards into the Alnnadna^ar, Poona 

 and Dharwar districts of Bombay. The flights were said to have caused some 

 injury to crops, especially in Sincl and the Central Provinces, cotton, arar, urd, 

 tili, kutki, kodajagni, tur, andjowar being all reported as suffering, as well as 

 trees, such as the chir [Piuus excelsa) ; but the people seem to have had little 

 difficulty in keeping them off the crops, and the injury occasioned does not appear 

 to have been of at all a serious nature. 



In November, 1890, flights were reported from the Punjab (Lahore, Amritsar, and 

 Dharmsala), from Sind (Karachi, Hyderabad, Shikarpur, and Upper Sind Fron- 

 tier), also from the Bhopawar Agency in Gwalior, and from Sambalpur 

 in the Central Provinces, while they continued to spread throughout the Bombav- 

 Deccan, Madras, and Bengal, penetrating even as far as Dhubri in Assam. In 

 Bengal they were reported from Lohardugga, Bankoora, Maldah, Bogra, 

 Furreedpur, Calcutta, Howrah, the 21-Pergunnahs, Dinagepur, and Rungpur ; 

 in the Bombay-Deccan, from Sholapur, Poona, Bijapur, Dharwar, Kanara, Satara, 

 Ratnagiri, Broach, Rajpipla, and the Mahikantha tract ; in Madras, from Ganjam, 

 Cuddapah, Bellary, Anantapur, and North Arcot. Slight injury to the crops was 

 reported fiom parts of Sind, Bombay, Bengal, and Madras, but the flights do not 

 seem to have been very large ones, and in the case of the one which visited 

 Calcutta, the insects were so weakly, and were being so rapidly eaten up by birds 

 of all kinds, and especially by kites, that there seemed to be every probability that 

 they would speedily be exterminated by this agency alone. 



The following is a summary of the records which have been collected 



_ . . of previous invasions of locusts which, at least in 



Previous invasions or 

 Acridium peregrinum in most of the cases, are practically certain to have 



India, belonged to the species Acridium peregrinum. These 



records cease with the year 1880, and no information has been obtained of the 

 presence of locusts likely to have belonged to the species Acridium peregrinum 

 between the years 1880 and 1889. It is probable therefore that during this period 

 the insect was unusually scarce and confined itself to its permanent breeding- 

 ground in the desert, where it would be little likely to attract notice. 



In the year 1812, according to Hunter's Gazetteer, locusts did some injury 

 in Ahmedabad and Broach. In 1821 they visited Etawah, the following being 

 an abstract of the account given by Playfair (Trans. Med. Phys. Soc, Cal- 

 cutta, 1825);— 



On 20th June, 1821, a large flight of locusts appeared at Etawah and settled in 

 the fields ; vast numbers of the locusts then copulated and hovered about the place 

 for about a month before taking their departure. On 18th July vast swarms of 

 young locusts emerged and proceeded to move slowdy over the country, devouring 

 the vegetation as they went. The cultivators tried to sweep them back from 



