STATE AGIUCULTURAL SOClEl V. 149 



East, the destruction of life must liave amounted to many millions. 

 In modern times, though locusts are no doubt as numerous and 

 potent, yet famine and loss of life is prevented by the spread of 

 knowledge, and the facility with wiiich sympathetic communities 

 transport food to the sufferers. The interior of each of the conti- 

 nents is infested with migratory locusts, and they are more numerous 

 in ratio to the area of the interior arid region — hence the greater noto- 

 riety of the Asiatic or Old World scourge. 



Three or four species are described as originating — not in the great 

 deserts of Asia, as often erroneously taught — but in the high steppes 

 of Southern Siberia and the regions north of Gobi, from whence they 

 radiate in all directions. One species, padiytylus migratorivs, has 

 devastated a region equal to the whole of Asia. The western limit 

 divides Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, Hungary, and Poland; 

 not in conformity with any contour of the country or character of 

 the vegetation, but as by a surveyor's line. The forest regions of 

 Central Siberia seem to form its northern limit. Corea, Japan, and 

 the Philippine Islands are infested as though only the want of vege- 

 tation constituted the eastern limit; wliile southward it sweeps over 

 the East Indies to Australia and New Zealand, infesting, however, 

 only the northern parts; and southward, to include, perhaps, all of 

 North Africa, north of Mauritius on the east and Maderia on the 

 west. This, and acridium peregrmum, from southwest Asia and north 

 Africa are, perhaps, surviving species of the plagues of Egypt. 



LOCUSTS OF THE NEW WORLD. 



No species of the western world is identical with any eastern one, 

 though acridinm Amerieanum very closely resembles the eastern one 

 of the same family, and it is often erroneously regarded as the locust 

 of Egypt. In America the great elevated plains east of and tlie slopes 

 of the Rocky Mountains, and the high, treeless hills separating the 

 waters of the Oronoco from the Amazon, are the permanent home of 

 the migratory locusts. Agassiz, Darwin, and other travelers in South 

 America, confirm the traditions of ages as to the frequent locust vis- 

 itations of all sections of tlie peninsula as far south as Chile. The 

 West Indies and Central America are horribly afflicted by a large 

 species, two and a half to four, and even five inches long. The Span- 

 ish call it the chapulin. It makes its appearance at periods of about 

 fifty years, and remains five to seven years. In these countries, as in 

 Mexico, the authorities organize regular campaigns against the invad- 

 ers, the citizens of entire communities going out to tight the locusts 

 with fire, digging ditches to entrap the young, or making frightful 

 noises, often with the effect to turn the swarms aside. Following this 

 plague has generally come a destroying pestilence. In the language 

 of TJiomas Gage: "The next year following all that Countrey was 

 infected with a kind of contageous Sicknesse, which was a Feaver in 

 the very inward parts, which scarse continued to the seventh day, 

 but commonly took them away the third or fifth day. It begun 

 about Mexico, and spread from Town to Town, as did the locusts the 

 year before." 



THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCUST. 



The most destructive locust on this continent has been given a 

 ■dozen local names, but lately is becoming widely known as the 



