OF AMERICA. 209 



and devastate the fields around to that extent and with that prompti- 

 tude that when they are seen by a new swarm of their fellows, there 

 is not anythin«5 more left to injure or consume. In the night they 

 neither eat nor sleep, but are all the time mounting and jumping on 

 each other in thick masses, and bending and cracking with their weight 

 the branches of the shrubs and trees they may cover or rest on.* 



"■ This lamentable insect-plague is bad enough in old and cultivated 

 countries, but in the miserable peninsula of California, where they 

 eat up the crops, green trees, fruits, and pastures, they cause great 

 mortality in the domestic animals of the missions, and with the effects 

 of their ravages on the cereal and other garden productions, cause 

 great famines and sickness among the inhabitants and neophytes of 

 the establishments. Atone time immense multitudes of these vora- 

 cious insects died, infecting the air dreadfully with the stench of their 

 corruption and decay. 



"The grasshoppers do not generally attack such plants as water- 

 melons and melons, for the reason that such plants have leaves covered 

 with fine pricking hairs. The pitahayos are naturally defended with 

 their spires and prickles, and with the other cactus family are not dis- 

 turbed, except in their flowers and ripe fruit. In the mescal plant 

 they only attack the extremities of the j;e??cas without touching the 

 shoot or sprout, which is a species of aliment used by the Indians. 



"From the year 1G97, when the Jesuits commenced the labor of 

 christianizing the heathens of California, the grasshoppers had not 

 made their appearance in the lands formed by the missions until the 

 year 1722, when they made their appearance, and then ceased until 

 1746, and for three years immediately following without intermission. 

 After this they did not return until 1753 and 1754, and, finally again, 

 before the expulsion of the fathers in 1705, 1766, and 1767. For many 

 reasons has this unhappy peninsula, for several consecutive years, 

 escaped the affliction of the plague of locusts. Probably in certain 

 seasons their eggs could not be hatched for the exceptions of the fall 

 of ordinary rains, as sometimes here occurs, and also for the abundance 

 or their eggs consumed by the birds. Also, it is stated, that in the 

 spring of the year incredible numbers of the grasshoppers are killed 

 by a certain worm which is engendered in the stomach of the locusts, 

 and which commits great havoc amongst them ; for this reason, 

 probably, and others mentioned, and some as yet unknown causes, 

 they have not made their appearance in large numbers in the seasons 

 elapsed between the years mentioned. 



"Anciently the Indians of the California missions used the grass- 

 hoppers as food, by first toasting them, and, after extracting the 

 entrails, pulverizing them before eating. But the good counsels of 

 the missionaries, after their appearance in 1722, when this species of 

 food occasioned among them a great sickness, caused them to leave off 

 using them, though some of the neophytes still would eat them in the 

 years when food became scarce from their ravages in the sowings." 



The following account is taken from the New Notes on Central 

 America, by E. Gr. Squier, from which it will be seen that the 



* Itis last fact was noted by the nurserymen of Sacramento in 1855. — A. S. T. 



14 



