48 



plants other than corn, and on the 30th of August indubitable 

 Aphis maidis of the aerial form were found to be not uncommon in 

 places on young grasses which later were found to be Panicum. 

 After this date they were repeatedly found on this grass. All those 

 examined from the grasses were apterous viviparous females and 

 young. 



Ox THE I.VJURIOUS LoCUSTS OF CeNTRAL ILLINOIS. 

 BY CLARENCE M. WEED. 



One of the most notable entomological events of the year 1885, in 

 Elinois, was the destructive outbreak of two common and widely 

 distributed species of locusts, or grasshoppers as they are more 

 familiarly known, the red-legged locust {Pezotettix femur ruhrum) 

 and the olive locust {Pezotetiix dijfercntialis), which resulted in much 

 serious iujury to various farm and garden crops, and caused no 

 little apprehension concemiug future attack in many farming com- 

 munities. The region infested may be broadly indicated as the area 

 between the fortieth and forty-second parallels of latitude, or in- 

 cluded within a parallelogram having the eastern and western 

 boundaries of the State for two of its sides, and horizontal lines 

 passing through the central portion of Champaign county on 

 the south and tbe northern boundary of DuPage county on the 

 north for the other two. But the region of greatest injury was 

 much more limited than this, being, as stated by Prof. Forbes in 

 an article "On Some lUinois Locusts," published in the Crop Re- 

 port of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, for August, 1885 

 "nearly circumscribed by a line running from the mouth of Kock 

 River to LaSalle, thence down the Illinois Central Railroad to 

 Bloomington, and from there to Quincy," nearly all the accounts 

 of serious mischief coming from the vicinity of Galesburg and Peoria, 

 in the triangular region between those points and the Illinois river 

 to the southward of the former place. In the report just cited, cor- 

 respondents record that the grasshoppers were so abundant as to 

 cover the pastures in Bureau, DuPage. and Fulton counties ; that 

 oats were "injured to a considerable extent just before harvesting" 

 in Grundy county ; that "grasshoppers are in greater numbers than 

 for twenty-five years" in Henry county ; that oats are poor in Iro- 

 quois county, "the grasshoppers having cut otf the heads of fully 

 one third of the crop;" that the pests "have injured tbe oat crop 

 some" in Kankakee county, as is the case in Livingston county, 

 where, also, "the condition of pastures is not good, owing to the 

 drouth and grasshoppers," From McDonough county the corres- 

 pondent writes that grasshoppers are very numerous and are "in- 

 juring the corn to some extent ;" while in McLean county "the 

 pastures were doing well until the grasshoppers began to work on 

 them." In Peoria county, accordmg to tue report, "the prospect 

 for an average yield of corn is not encouraging, owing to the vast 

 amount of replanting and the injury done by grasshoppers," while 

 "oats have been injured in Rock Island county; and there was 



