THE LOCUSTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 171 



them flying for above their heads. It is to be observed, 

 however, that they customarily return, and perish on the 

 very grounds which they have ravaged." Through the kind- 

 ness of the Rev. L. W. Leonard, of Dubhn, New Hampshire, 

 I have been favored with specimens of the destinictive locusts 

 which occasionally appear in that part of New England, and 

 which, most probably, are of the same species as the insects 

 mentioned by President Dwight. They prove to be the little 

 red-lessed locusts, whose ravages on our salt-marshes I have 

 already recorded. 



In the summer of 1838, the vicinity of Baltimore, Mary- 

 land, was infested by insects of this kind ; and I was in- 

 formed by a young gentleman from that place, then a student 

 in Harvard College, that they were so thick and destructive 

 in the garden and grounds of his father, that the negroes 

 were employed to drive them from the garden with rods ; 

 and in this way they were repeatedly whipped out of the 

 grounds, leaping and flying before the extended line of cas- 

 tigators like a flock of fowls. Some of these insects were 

 brought to me by the same gentleman, on his return to the 

 University, at the end of the summer vacation, and they 

 turned out to be specimens of the red-legged locusts already 

 mentioned. 



It is not to be supposed that these are the only depreda- 

 tory locusts in this country. Massachusetts alone produces 

 a large number of species, some of wdiich have never been 

 described ; and the habits of many of them have not beeji 

 fully investigated. The difficulty which I have met with in 

 ascertaining, from mere verbal reports, or from the accounts 

 that occasionally appear in our public prints, the scientific 

 names of the noxious insects which are the subjects of such 

 remarks, and the impossibility, without this knowledge of 

 their names, of fixing upon the true culprits, has induced 

 me to draw up, in tliis treatise, brief descriptions of all our 

 locusts, as a guide to other persons in their investigations. 



All the locusts of Massachusetts that are known to me 



