Experience with mi Outbreak of Grasshoppers. 271 



Rouge. At Livonia the writer learned that although plenty 

 of the grasshoppers occurred in the locality and had attacked 

 com, the farmers were not alarmed about them. 



The results of the last treatments made before our departure 

 from Oscar were reported by the planter in a letter written 

 on the 19th, in which he reviewed the whole situation, saying 

 as repeated herewith : 



Director W. R. Dodson, Experiment Station, Baton Rouge, La.: 



Dear Sir — At the request of Mr. Tucker, who recently visited this 

 section and made some experiments in an effort to poison the grasshoppers 

 now very prevalent and destructive here I beg to submit the following: 



The first poison used was Paris green, with one part poison to fifteen 

 of air-slacked lime. This had no effect other than to kill some of the 

 vegetation and a very few hoppers, but not enough apparently to reduce 

 their numbers or to drive them away from the patches to which poison 

 had been applied. Then poisoned wheat bran was used after a formula 

 furnished by Mr. Tucker. This had no effect whatever, as the hoppers 

 did not eat it. Then under the direction of Mr. Tucker and Mr. Webb, of 

 the U. S. Department of Agriculture, a mixture of horse manure, salt 

 and Paris gi-een was placed in the field where the hoppers were most 

 plentiful. Like the bran mixture, it would have been fine, only the hop- 

 pers would not eat it. Then pure arsenate of lead was applied to weeds 

 and crops in quantities ranging from normal field conditions of three 

 to four pounds per acre to perhaps fifteen or twenty pounds and at a pro- 

 hibitive cost for labor and time. Under normal field conditions the ap- 

 plications produced no effects whatever, but the heavy applications dam- 

 aged the corn plants a little and killed very few hoppers, not enough, 

 however, to make any appreciable decrease in their numbers. 



The hoppers seemed to have hatched out in lands that were overflowed 

 last year and which were not cultivated this year. On my farm that 

 means only ditch and bayou and roadsides, but there are many hundreds 

 of acres of land surrounding me that are not in cultivation and that have 

 produced enormous numbers of hoppers. Up to now, however, they are 

 not migTating to any great extent, but are eating along the edges of the 

 fields near which they were hatched. The damage done to date is not 

 great to corn, but cotton has suffered considerable damage and yesterday 

 I noticed them eating all of the silk from the ears of corn in the rows near 

 the dit-jh banks, etc. This I believe means that we will make a good 

 shuck and cob but no grain on the ears so damaged. 



I thank you and your assistants for your effoz'ts to help us in the mat- 

 ter, but must say that the results so far have been only negative ones. 

 We hav( learned some of the things that will not work. 



Thos. H. Hewes. 



Throughout all of the observations carried on by the writer, 

 rarely was^ a small bird seen on the infe.sted lands, where, with 

 such an abundance of insects, flocks of our so-called feathered 



