ENTOMOLOGY IN OUTLINE — ORTPIOPTERA. 



33 



binds all the eggs in a mass, and when the last is laid, the mother 

 devotes some time to filling up the somewhat narrower neck of the 

 burrow with a compact and cellular mass of the same material, which, 

 although light and easily penetrated, is more or less impervious to 

 water, and forms a very excellent protection. When fresh, the mass is 

 soft and moist, but it soon acquires a firm consistency." 



The Rocky Mountain locust {Melanoplus spretus) is the most dreaded 

 of any of our American species. This species finds an ideal breeding 

 place in the high plateaus of the Rocky Mountains, where tens of 

 thousands of square miles have been untouched by the plow for all the 

 ages. Here they breed undisturbed, and by countless millions, and 

 those who have never seen a flight of these insects can form no idea of 

 their numbers — or • 



perhaps, of their 

 quantity, for num- 

 bers is an inadequate 

 term. In their flight, 

 they will sometimes 

 swoop down upon a 

 fertile section and 

 in a short time dev- 

 astate hundreds of 

 square miles. Kan- 

 sas has suffered se- 

 verely from their 

 depredations, until 

 Kansas and locusts 

 have become con- 

 nected in the mind. 

 Yet these insects are 

 not indigenous to 

 Kansas, nor can they thrive there. Their natural habitat is the high 

 plateaus of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of from 2,000 to 

 10,000 feet. Here, when their food supply becomes short, a swarm 

 will sometimes rise in the air, and on their expanded wings may 

 be carried hundreds of miles on an air current until they alight in 

 a place far distant from their breeding grounds. Thus they reached 

 Kansas and did damage for several years. Each year their numbers 

 became fewer until they disappeared, Kansas and its climate not being 

 suited to them. 



Swarms of Rocky Mountain locusts reach Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and 

 frequently eastern California; occasional small swarms pass over the 

 Sierra Nevada range, but on this side of the range they have never 

 been very numerous or in suflicient quantities to be serious. 

 3— E 



FIG. 37. Rocky Mountain locust (^Melanoplus ■'^prctiis) ovipositing. 

 Females with abdomen inserted in the soil; egg-pod broken 

 open and lying on the surface; a few scattered eggs; section of 

 soil removed to show eggs being put in place, and egg-pod 

 sealed over. 



