HALF HOURS WITH nfSECTS. 



[Packakd. 



their family relatives in this country. Rumors arc j'carly 

 heard of immense flocks of grasshoppers (Fig. 1 a, Caloptc- 

 nus spretus) devastating immense tracts of soil in the farthest 

 west and the racilic slopes of the Rocky Mountains. In Nev^ 

 England and the Canadas our most common grasshopper 

 (Fig. 1 6, Caloptenus femur-ruhrum) has at times emulated 

 the bad fame of the eastern locust. In Williamson's " His- 

 tory of Maine," it is stated that "in 1749 and 1754 the 

 common red-legged grasshoppers were very numerous and 

 voracious : no vegetables escaped these greedy troops ; 

 they even devoured the potato tops ; and in 1743 and 1756 

 they covered the whole country and threatened to devour 

 Fig. 1. everything green. Indeed, 



so great was the alarm they 

 occasioned among the peo- 

 ple that days of fasting and 

 ^, .■ prayer were appointed, on 



account of the threatened 

 calamity." Dr. Harris thus 

 quotes from P r e s i d c n t 

 Dwight's Travels: "Their 

 h voracity extends to almost 



Destructive Grasshoppers. „ i ii„ „ „„ i„ 



^^ every vegetable ; even to 



the tobacco plant and the burdock. Nor are they confined to 

 vegetables alone. The gai'ments of laborers, hung up in the 

 field while they are at work, these insects destroy in a few 

 hours, and with the same voracity they devour the loose par- 

 ticles which the saw leaves upon the surface of pine boards, 

 and which, when separated, are termed sawdust. The ap- 

 pearance of a board fence from which the particles had been 

 eaten in this manner, and which I saw, was novel and sin- 

 gular ; and seemed the result, not of the operations of the 

 plane, but of attrition. At times, particularly a little before 

 their disappearance, they collect in clouds, rise high in the at- 

 mosphere, and take extensive flights, of which neither the 



4 



