330 AKNTJAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1942 



In the field of development of mechanical insect-control devices 

 attempts to produce a practical grasshopper catcher or "hopper- 

 dozer" have been many and varied, and have been more or less con- 

 tinuous since the great outbreaks of the Rocky Mountain locust soon 

 after the Civil War. Certain of these machines are fairly practical 

 for the control of some species on some crops and under certain con- 

 ditions, especially since the advent of motor trucks and tractors to 

 which they can be attached and by which they can be run rapidly over 

 the infested fields. Even the best of them are not very efficient, how- 

 ever, and the use of "hopperdozers" has been almost entirely super- 

 seded by the cheaper and more efficient poison-baiting method of 

 control. 



INSECTICIDES AND REPELLENTS 



By far the most extensive uses of insecticides for cereal insects are in 

 the form of baits for grasshoppers, army worms, and cutworms attack- 

 ing these crops in the field; and of fumigants for moths, weevils and 

 related insects attacking grain or cereal products during storage or 

 milling. 



Before the advent of poison-bran bait the farmers were at as great 

 a disadvantage against several of these insects as were the Indians 

 with their bows and arrows against the American pioneers equipped 

 with rifles. Cultural methods of one kind or another, most of which 

 are preventive rather than remedial, and which, to be effective, must 

 be applied before the crop is actually planted, were practically the 

 only recourse of the farmer. Even the best informed and most fore- 

 sighted farmers were more or less helpless in the face of the periodical 

 outbreaks of one or another of these insects that occur when con- 

 ditions favor their increase for a season or two. Many less well in- 

 formed farmers devoutly believed that a visitation of armyworms or 

 grasshoppers to their fields was divine punishment for some trans- 

 gression of which they might not even be aware. 



POISON BAITS 



The first recorded use of poison bait against grasshoppers was in 

 the 1880's by farmers in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Doubt- 

 less the first farmer to try it was considered by his neighbors to be 

 rather weak-minded if not crazy to expect the hoppers to pay any 

 attention to a thin sprinkling or a few little heaps of poisoned bran 

 in competition with their natural food plants. Nevertheless, the 

 scheme worked surprisingly well. It was improved by the substitution 

 of wheat bran for middlings and called to the attention of farmers 

 and entomologists in other parts of the country by D. W. Coquillet, 

 a noted investigator of that day in the field of insect control, who first 

 observed its use in California. 



