398 STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE BULLETINS 



The eggs are placed in the ground, preferably on some sand knoll or 

 ridge, as far as I have observed. There will be found probably from 100 

 to 150 deposited by each female in the autumn in an oblong case nearly an 

 inch under the surface. The eggs are all tightly glued together in the 

 case so that they are well protected from cold and wet through the winter. 

 With the coming of the bright warm days of spring the young locust 

 emerges from its subterranean home and takes its first meal on the tender 

 blades above. Its jaws are large and strong and moved by powerful 

 muscles. All through its summer life it has a strong appetite and grass 

 and other plants suited to its taste disappear surprisingly fast for the work 

 of so small a creature. 



At the Iowa Station* careful estimates have been made of the injury 

 done to pastures and meadows by the various insects that feed there, and 

 it is thought that one-half or more of the grass in that state is lost in this 

 way. This loss in Iowa, and Michigan as well, is not alone through the 

 grasshoppers and locusts. Crickets aid considerably, and there are also 

 myriads of smaller insects known as leaf-hoppers which are usually over- 

 looked because of their diminutive size. Besides these there are dozens 

 of other species of insects that are always present in greater or less 

 numbers. They all come in for their share of feed though seldom thought 

 of or considered in estimating our loss. As it is larger and more conspicu- 

 ous and so more easily seen, the locust is usuallj^ held accountable for the 

 whole loss. The loss of crops is more noticeable in a dry season. The 

 tendency of such a season is to favor the development of locusts, but the 

 work becomes more apparent largely because the plant is unable to recover 

 its loss so readily as in a more favorable season. 



REMEDIES. 



Owing to the large area over which the locusts and other grass feeding 

 species are found, the suggesting of a remedy is made rather more difficult. 

 The use of remedies in the usual limited way is entirely impracticabe and 

 it is only by the means of some inexpensive, wholesale destruction that we 

 must look for relief. 



Molasses and bran makes a very attractive morsal for locusts, and a little 

 arsenic mixed with the two and sprinkled through the fields where the 

 locusts feed, is reported from some badly eaten districts as being a very 

 good means of ridding the fields by killing the locusts by the thousand. 

 Such means might be used in the oatfield, meadow or cultivated field, but 

 not where stock is pasturing. 



Fig. 2. " Hopper dozer," for catching locnsts and Riiiiilar ia^^ects. t,Aft«r Siiiitli.) 



The best and most certain method is to collect the locusts mechanically. 

 The best means of doing this is by a collector known as a '"hopper dozer." 



*Bnlletin No. 13, Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, page 95. 



