45 



THE WESTERN LOCUSTS. 



BY THE REV. C. J. S. BETHUNE. 



In our last Annual Report (1874) we devoted a considerable portion of our space to an 

 account of the Locusts (or grasshoppers as they are improperly termed), which were so 



gleaned from various sources, and that, we trust, will prove interesting to the reader. 



During the present year (1875) it is cheering to find that the extent of the plague 

 has been very much diminished, and that many portions of the West are rapidly recover- 

 ing from the devastation and suffering of the previous year. In the Province of Mani- 

 toba, where very serious havoc has been committed by the insect, there are this year many 

 localities where the injury is but trifling. To quote a correspondent of the Toronto Globe 

 (October 30, 1875) — " No better wheat and potatoes can anywhere be found than were 

 lately harvested at Portage La Prairie and along the Red River between Fort Garry and 

 Pembina, and in the neighbourhood of St. John. All this is spring-sown, in rich, well- 

 drained land. Efforts in the infested regions, made by settlers and their families during 

 the few hours in which the locust rested, such as building fires, surrounding the field or 

 garden with a ditch into which the in.sects fall and drown, beating them with bushes, &c., 

 have been successful in saving large parts of the crops." On the other hand, he states : 

 " Many of the farmers this year let their fields go waste rather than plant for tlie locusts 

 to eat, as they had done for two years. In the gardens of Government House and of the 

 Penitentiary, in the old field at Kildonan, and along the banks of both rivers, we saw 

 the effects of the ravages. The garden of Deer Lodge was destroyed in a few hours." 

 With regard to the future he adds : " It is generally hoped that but little of this plague 

 will be felt for some years in Manitoba. The grounds for such confidence are the histori- 

 cal facts as to its periodicity, the great numbers of the parasites found on the specimens 

 examined, and the fact that the locusts flew off without depositing their eggs. In lands 

 where nature has dealt with less lavish hand the farmer might well hesitate to embark his 

 means and labour in tillage ; but the great returns which the marvellously rich, deep soil 

 of this Province will yearly produce, will doubtless allow an ample margin for periodical 

 losses from this plague, and these losses too may be antici[iated, and to a great extent met 

 and lessened, by united skilful effort when the lands become settled, as no doubt they soon 

 will be, with industrious farmers using all modern means of agriculture." 



Another writer in the same newspaper (Mr. .1. M. Macliar — Daily Globe, Dec. IS, 

 1875) gives the following information respecting ^lanitolia : — " Between the Assiniboine 

 and the southern shore of Lake Manitoba there lies a district of about ten miles sipi ire, 

 chiefly settled and farmed by emigrants from Ontario. These farmers have harvested, in 

 spite of the grasshoppers, a two-tliirds crop, which is better than an average crop in 

 Ontario. Instead of sowing nothing, as did many of their neighliours in the parishes of 

 Baie St. Paul and Francois Xavier, or watching the gra.sshoppers devour what they had 

 sown, as did most of the others, these brave men sowed in hope, and when the enemy 

 appeared, turned out and fought him. I saw a forty-acre field of splendid wheat at Port- 



