ORTHOPTERA. 147 



they are sufficiently formidable to have attracted attention, 

 and not unfrequently have these insects laid waste considerable 

 tracts, and occasioned no little loss to the cultivator of tiie soil. 

 Our salt-marshes, which are accounted among the most pro- 

 ductive and valuable of our natural meadows, are frequented 

 by great numbers of the small red-legged species (Acn/dium 

 femur-rubrum), intermingled occasionally with some larger 

 kinds. These, in certain seasons, almost entirely consume the 

 grass of these marshes, from whence they then take their course 

 to the uplands, devouring, in their way, grass, corn, and vege- 

 tables, till checked by the early frosts, or by the close of the 

 natural term of their existence. When a scanty crop of hay 

 has been gathered from the grounds which these puny pests 

 have ravaged, it becomes so tainted with the putrescent bodies 

 of the dead locusts contained in it, that it is rejected by horses 

 and cattle. In this country locusts are not distinguished from 

 grasshoppers, and are generally, though incorrectly, compre- 

 hended under the same name, or under that of flying grass- 

 hoppers. They are, however, if we make allowance for their 

 inferior size, quite as voracious and injurious to vegetation 

 during the young or larva and pupa states, when they are not 

 provided with wings, as they are when fully grown. In our 

 newspapers I have sometimes seen accounts of the devastations 

 of grasshoppers, which could only be applicable to some of our 

 locusts. At various times they have appeared in great abund- 

 ance in different parts of New England. It is stated that, 

 in Maine, "during dry seasons, they often appear in great 

 multitudes, and are the greedy destroyers of the half-parched 

 herbage." " In 1749 and 1754 they 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 every 

 thing green. Indeed, so great was the alarm they occasioned 

 among the people, that days of fasting and prayer were 

 appointed,"* on account of the threatened calamity. The 



* See Williamson's History of Maine, Vol. I. pp. 102, 103, and compare -with 

 p. 172 of the same work. 



