STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 169 



INSECT ENEMIES. 



The most efficient locust enemies, though often unheralded and 

 unseen, are small animals of its own great class of insects. They 

 prey upon it from the egg to the adult, while roosting at night or 

 flying by day. It is one of the grandest class of laws in nature that 

 every animal in time meets with checks of one kind and another to 

 its undue multiplication. Even the slowest breeding species would 

 soon overrun the country were the counteracting influences by any 

 means removed, while the more prolific species would do so in an 

 incredibly short space of time. 



Plant-feeders are generally very proliflc, and would soon annihilate 

 their favorite plants. But mother Nature, kind alike to all, and cruel 

 to all, advances her grand purposes, maintaining alive her myriads 

 of species, each warring upon the other and gaining temporary 

 supremacy, until, in consequence of changed conditions, one species 

 after another in the long warfare of ages gradually becomes too weak 

 for its foes, so becomes extinct while others appear. 



Let a gramniverous insect like the locust become numerous, and 

 at once its enemies — those that fatten and flourish upon it — invari- 

 ably multiply until they got the upper hand. Hence, a particular 

 plant-eater may be terribly destructive one year and scarcely heard 

 of the next, quietly checked by an unseen enemy. 



It is a comfort to know this, and particularly to find that no insect, 

 seemingly, has more and fiercer enemies, within and without, than 

 the locust. The Locust Commission describe and illustrate a host of 

 some fi-fty or more, including parasitic mites no larger than pins' 

 heads, flies, wasps, beetles, and the like, that either feed u])on locusts 

 themselves, or whose larva devour them or their eggs. The attacks 

 of a certain wasp are entirely wanton, no use being made of the 

 locust when killed. 



THE RED SILKY MITE. 



Chief among the parasitic enemies, and infesting alike the hated 

 spretiis of the interior and our atrocious locust, is a wonderfully 

 interesting little creature but recently carefully studied, and its 

 natural history cleared up by the Commission. So diverse are its 

 forms at diff"erent stages that until 1877 it has borne several names, 

 and was considered as belonging to two widely separated genera, for 

 in its early stage it has six legs and is hairless; later it develops eight 

 legs, and is densely covered with velvet. This mite first becomes 

 evident to the common observer as a little, red, spider-like creature, 

 hurrying over the ground in early spring. Close examination shows 

 it to have a thick, almost ovate body, covered with red, silky velvet, 

 and four sliort, also silk-covered legs. TJie male is the smaller, 

 about the size of a pin's head, and distinctly narrowed toward the 

 rear. The female is as large as half a kernel of wheat, and tending 

 to oblong in figure. 



In Sierra Valley it was most observed where locust eggs were most 

 deposited, and proved a sure guide to their locality. It is said that 

 the female lays 300 or 400 minute, orange eggs in a mass, an inch or 

 two below the surface of the ground. They hatch just in a time for 

 attacking the young locusts, but are generally unobserved until the 

 locust has reached the adult or winged state. Especially late in the 

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