MEANS OF DESTROYING THE GRASSHOPPER. 227 



ing large quantities of domestic fowls, and especially training them 

 betimes to feed on .young locusts in the places where the latter are 

 often found, is exceedingly advantageous to the husbandman. The 

 training of goslings, chickens^ and young turkeys to feed on young 

 locusts is to be effected not at once, but gradually, by the poultry- 

 keeper, who should present at first one or two locusts in the crumbled 

 food of the young fowl, and increase the quantity by degrees by the 

 addition of living as well as dead insects. The breeding of largo 

 numbers of Guinea-fowl, (Numida meleagris,) which multiply rapidly 

 in the steppe cantons of the Caucasus, would have the effect of di- 

 minishing the swarms of locusts; since this bird is all its life constantly 

 running to and fro, and would vigorously pursue the insects. 



8. All the locusts which are thus collected and killed or crushed 

 can be profitably employed in manuring flower or kitchen gardens and 

 fields; for after they are crushed they cannot breed or do any further 

 injury, and they constitute an excellent fertilizer. 



9. W the locusts have already nearly reached their full growth, and 

 the inhabitants and proprietors in their vicinity have not taken notice, 

 of the fact^ it will be necessary to Avatch them witli double vigilance;^ 

 in order to surprise tliem in the act of* assuming the winged form, at 

 which time they are uncommonly feeble and sluggish. It will then 

 be found very advantageous to drive out troops of horses, all the 

 horned cattle, and the swine, into the places where these tender and 

 pale-colored insects are to be found, for the purpose of trampling them 

 down. 



10. If the insects should fly to a distance, and settle anywhere in sr 

 thick mass, it would be well Fig. 9. 



to send out people to the spot |., 

 in the evening with heavy 

 rollers, made of timber, fixed 

 on iron or wooden axles and 

 drawn by horses or oxen. 

 They should be made suf- 

 ficiently heavy, of logs nine 



or ten inches in diameter, ' _:=g=^^5g^_. j^sf* 



and about seven feet long. ^,^-„;^a^s^^gs^k^,:^ ^,^,^^-„,^„,„ ^ - 



The locusts, wearied with flying about, and having eaten their fill by 

 the evening, sit at night, and especially towards morning till sunrise, 

 quietly and closely ; so that the roller when drawn amoDg them 

 crushes multitudes, and thus one's neighbors' fields, if not one's own, 

 are preserved. By not permitting the locusts to lay their eggs, the 

 proprietor can indulge the hope that in the following year liis crops 

 will escape. I regard the providing of these rollers "in districts in- 

 fested by the locusts as a public necessity, as in some cases tliey can 

 also be usefully employed against the so called earth-worm. 



11. Besides the rollers, the use of bags fixed on hoops, as in fig. 4 

 or 3, will be found advantageous, according to whether the grass and 

 grains are to be preserved or whether they may be trodden down, which 

 again will depend upon their degree of ripeness. The hunt should 

 be commenced at sunrise and continued until the morning dew is dried 

 up, after which the locusts become too brisk in their movements. 



