488 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



GIGANTIC LOCUSTS. 



carefully executed figures of them which are herewith presented, Plates iii and 

 iv, should have a place in the Transactions of the Society, as a memento of the 

 lamented donor. 



When we look upon these huge creatures, the Goliaths of their race, we are 

 led to think that the statement of Pliny is not so gross an exaggeration as has 

 been supposed, when he speaks of grasshoppers which are three feet in length, 

 with legs so large that the people use them for saws. And recollecting what 

 voracious cormorants the insects of this group are, the first query which arises 

 in the mind is. Are these insects common in the countries which they inhabit ? 

 And when we learn that they are often quite numerous we next ask, How then 

 is it possible for an}' thing to grow there .'' A dozen of these insects in one of 

 our gardens would in a few days utterly ruin everything therein. But the 

 same causes which in hot climates give such vigor to animal life as to produce 

 insects of this enormous size, operate equally upon the vegetable kingdom, 

 stimulating it to such a rapidity and exuberance of growth, such a rank luxu- 

 riance of development, as appears incredible and miraculous to those acquainted 

 only with the vegetation of temperate and cold latitudes. Hence the havoc 

 which these insects and hosts of others which are akin to them occasion, 

 becomes speedily repaired. 



The migratory or Asiatic locust, which, like the Asiatic cholera among dis- 

 eases, stands most prominent for the sudden and sweeping destruction which 

 it occasions, is one of the largest insects of this kind which inhabit the eastern 

 continent, measuring two inches in length. But in the tropical countries of 

 America four different insects of the same group are met with which are nearly 

 or quite double the size of that noted species. And we are informed that like 

 it, these insects are migratory, uniting together in swarms at times when they 

 are numerous, taking wing, and causing the most frightful devastation in the 

 districts where they alight, often consuming every green thing and leaving the 

 spot as naked and black as though fire had passed over it. Hence the name 

 locust is supposed to have come from the Latin words locus ustus, signifying a 

 burnt place. 



Whilst the IT. S. ship Portsmouth was lying in the harbor of Acapulco, 

 Mexico, in the summer of 1854, Lieut. Thomas Pattison informs me that per 

 sons visiting the vessel frequently gave accounts of the terrible havoc which 

 was then going on a few miles back from the coast, from swarms of large 

 grasshoppers which had alighted there; and some of the officers on their re- 

 turn from an excursion on shore, among other things related that they had 

 seen the limbs of trees which were thicker than a man's arm, broken down by 

 the numbers of these insects which had alighted upon them to feed upon the 

 leaves. A large grasshopper which Lieut. P. found upon the coast and which 

 he thought might perhaps be a straggler from these swarms, probably was not 

 the species concerned in this ruin, as it pertains to the group called caty-dids 

 or green grasshoppers (Family Gryllida} and not to the family of locusts 

 (^LocustidaT). These two families are readily distinguished from each other by 

 their antennae, which are short and of equal thickness, like a thread, in the 

 latter, and in the former long, slender and perceptibly tapering towards their 



