210 GRASSHOPPEKS AND LOCUSTS 



Locusta of Central America is nearly if not quite identical witli that 

 of California : 



"The insect, however, which is most dreaded in Honduras, as, 

 indeed, in all Central America, is the Langosta, or Chapulin, a spe- 

 cies of grasshopper or loou&t, which at intervals afflicts the entire 

 country, passing from one end to the other in vast columns of many 

 millions, literally darkening the air and destroying everything green 

 in their course. I once (in 1853) rode through one of these columns 

 which was fully ten miles in width. Not only did the insects cover 

 the ground, rising in clouds on each side of the mule path as I ad- 

 vanced, hut the open pine forest was brown with their myriad bodies, 

 as if the trees had been seared with fire, while the air was filled with 

 them as it is with falling flakes in a snow storm. Their course is 

 always from south to north. They make their first appearance as 

 Sallones, of diminutive size, red bodies and wingless, when they swarm 

 over the ground like ants. At this time vast numbers of them are 

 killed by the natives, who dig long trenches, two or three feet deep, and 

 drive the Salfones into them. Unable to leap out, tbe trench soon be- 

 comes half filled with the young insects, when the earth is shoveled 

 back, and they are thus buried and destroyed. They are often driven 

 in this way into the rivers and drowned. Various expedients are 

 resorted to by the owners of plantations to prevent the passing columns 

 from alighting. Sulphur is burned in the fields, guns are fired, drums 

 beaten, and every mode of making a noise put in requisition for the pur- 

 pose. In this mode detached plantations are often saved. But when the 

 columns once alight, no device can avail to rescue them from speedy 

 desolation. In a single hour the largest maize fields are stripped of 

 •their leaves, and only the stems are left to indicate that they once 

 existed. 



"It is said that the CJiapuUn makes its appearance at the end of 

 periods of about fifty years, and that it then prevails for from five t3 

 seven years, when it entirely disappears. But its habits have never 

 been studied with care, and I am unprepared to affirm anything in 

 these respects. Its ordinary size is from two and a half to four inches 

 in length, but it sometimes grows to the length of five inches. 



" The crops of maize are often destroyed by the locusts in the course 

 of a few hours. As the visitation is usually general, it sometimes 

 results in a great scarcity, bordering on famine, in which case maize 

 advances to as high as four and five and even ten dollars per bushel. 

 Fortunately the insect seldom attacks the fields which are planted 

 high up on the slopes of the mountains, where the people make their 

 milpalis during the periodical visitations of the Chapulin." 



This statement is consonant with the accounts received from Hon- 

 duras and Guatemala of the famine and pestilence of fever in those 

 countries in 1855 and 1856, caused by clouds of locusts devastating 

 the country, and confirms Gage's history of the same lands in 1632. 



At the time of the visit of Darwin to Chile and the adjacent 

 countries of South America, he relates of the grasshoppers as follows, 

 at the date of March 25, 1835, where he is crossing the dry country 

 which lies between the city of Mendoza, in Buenos Ayres, and the 

 opposite side of Chile. This country assimilates in every essential 



