224 



MEANS OF DESTROYING THE GRASSHOPPER. 



Fig. 5. 



For the destruction of the locusts in Bessarabia, in the year 1836, 

 the following measures were adopted by Col. Tshernjavski, on the 

 principle that the less the locusts have advanced in their groiuthy the 

 acsier they can he destroyed: 



In the first days when the rye began to shoot into ear, 150 persons, 



both grown people and children, were 

 despatched into the fields belonging 

 to the villages of Gantshur end Po- 

 goya, of the Bender district. The 

 children were furnished with com- 

 mon zvooden heaters, shaped like those 

 used by washerwomen^ having a blade 

 two feet long, five inches wide, and 

 seven-eighths of an inch thick, with a 

 curved handle ten inches long, and 

 so contrived as to strike with the flat side upon the ground or the 

 locusts. The adults had a sort of shovel with a much longer handle, 

 three feet in length, so as to be grasped with both hands. 



Fig. 6. They found the locusts, as 



yet of very small size, in 

 swarms in the places where 

 they were hatched. The la- 

 borers provided with beaters 

 and shovels were divided, 

 under the direction of their 

 superintendent, into parties 

 of twenty, thirty, or forty in- 

 dividuals; and having taken 

 up their positions on the bor- 

 ders of the space occupied by the locusts, they proceeded from the 

 various sides to crush them out, approaching gradually towards the 

 centre, where they thickly accumulated. As the small locusts do not 

 quit their birth-place, the laborers went three times over the same 

 locality. Accordingly^ after giving time for those which had escaped 

 ^''s-'?. to collect into masses, ten 



or fifteen laborers destroyed 

 in the enclosed space the en- 

 tire brood without leaving 

 a remnant. In the course of 

 >two weeks, with the above 

 mentioned number of 150 

 laborers, the whole of the 

 locusts were everywhere de- 

 stroyed. 



In the district of Olanesh, 

 in the year 1837, forty per- 

 sons were employed in the 

 same way; and in the course 

 of five days, viz : from the 

 1st to the 5th of June, the whole brood of locusts were extirpated for 

 the space of nearly three-quartera of a mile, and over seven bushels 



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