June, '10] HOWARD : AFRICAN LOCUST PROBLEM 361 



over trains were often delayed by the greasy crushed forms on the 

 tracks. A swarm such as this will do a vast amount of damage. 

 Scarcely a green thing is left behind, even the washing hung to dry 

 on the line may be partly devoured and the ground is covered with a 

 thick carpet of the fseces. Large trees are completely broken down 

 by the weight of the sleeping locusts at night; the veldt is stripped 

 bare of the green grass in the dry season and every winter crop of 

 grain, etc., is cut down. When there are dozens of such swarms in 

 a country the size of the Transvaal it can easily be imagined what the 

 results are to the farming population. During the invasion of the 

 winter of 1906 we endeavoured to secure statistics of the loss occa- 

 sioned, and we found that at least £1,000,000 of crops, including 

 damage to the veldt, had disappeared into the stomachs of these lo- 

 custs. 



The flying locusts come in the dry season when few crops are grow- 

 ing and those usually small in plots which can be irrigated and which 

 can be protected, at least partially, from the ravages of the flying 

 locusts. But with the first rains come the hoppers, the progeny of 

 invading swarms of flyers. The hoppers have been aptly termed 

 voetgangers, by the Dutch population, voetganger being the term for 

 infantry. "When a district is full of hoppers, not in swarms of feet 

 or yards in extent but often actually miles in extent, marching like 

 an army so thick as to turn the veldt brown, the farmers may well 

 give up in despair. Nothing will turn them from their course and 

 every gTeen thing disappears before them. 



During the season of 1906- '07, referred to above, when locusts 

 oviposited in enormous numbers over the whole Transvaal, the statis- 

 tics, also referred to above, showed that at least £10,000,000 worth of 

 crops were preserved through the actions of the Government, which 

 would have otherwise been destroyed and the population both black 

 and white reduced nearly to starvation. This work of destruction 

 was done by the Government at a cost of about £12,000, an in- 

 finitesimal sum compared with the value of the crops saved. So thor- 

 oughly was the work done that scarcely a swarm of voetgangers was 

 able to escape destruction and reach maturity. 



To correctly understand the locust problem of South Africa, how- 

 ever, it must be remembered that we have two species of locusts, dis- 

 tinct in their habits and distribution. This is a fact ignored by many 

 European writers on the subject and has caused much confusion. Be- 

 cause locusts also occur in Egypt, Algeria and Central and East 

 Africa many have tried to prove that the Sahara desert was the cen- 

 ter from which locusts spread out North, East and South over the 



