51 



untouched portion being double that of the rest. Of the injury to 

 clover Mr. Davis said that he had seventy acres in meadow and 

 pasture, largely clover, and the loss occasioned by the locusts 

 amounted to at least five dollars per acre. A forty-acre pasture on 

 which the insects were driven from the oat field when the oats were 

 cut was eaten close, and in many cases the growth was entirely 

 killed, the attack necessitating feeding with other forage the stock 

 pasturing upon it. The clover of the thirty- acre meadow was in the 

 greater portion killed, and the timothy was badly injured. 



The above statements of the damage caused by grasshoppers on 

 Mr. Davis's farm in all probability fairly represent the then exist- 

 ing condition of many other farms in Peoria county. From a num- 

 ber of gentlemen who were at Mr. Davis's home at the time of my 

 visit, I learned that in the whole region around French Grove 

 serious depredations had taken place. Mr. M. P. Pieed, an intel- 

 ligent farmer residing in the vicinity, stated that he had forty acres 

 of oats damaged to an extent equal to seven bushels per acre : a loss 

 of 280 bushels. A separate piece of four acres, also belonging to 

 Mr. R., bordered by pasture on one side and meadow on the other, 

 was totally destroyed. Mr. Pieed also mentioned a twenty acre field 

 of oats belonging to Mr. Homer Tucker, that was so damaged that 

 no attempt was made to harvest it. He added that the grasshop- 

 pers in the oats at the time of threshing, made such a horrible 

 stench that it was sickening to measure ; the oats that were threshed 

 earliest being worst in this respect. Mr. Samuel Eeed stated that 

 some of his oats were more injured after they were in the shock 

 than before. Another instance was reported, where, from twenty- 

 five acres of oats, only one hundred and sixty bushels were 

 harvested, the small yield being attributed to a visit from the 

 locusts. Clover was also seriously injured on many farms. Mr. M. 

 P. Reed, whose statements concerning injuries to oats have just been 

 quoted, reported that a splendid stand of clover and timothy in a 

 forty-acre field, which had been in oats, was destroyed, and a stand 

 of clover belonging to Mr. Samuel Reed, which was as high as the 

 stubble when the oats were cut, was so devastated that at the time 

 of threshing not a green leaf could be seen. 



ENEMIES. 



Fortunately there are a considerable number of species of animals 

 that depend, to a greater or less extent, upon grasshoppers for sub- 

 sistence. Some of these are predaceous, others parasitic, but all 

 combine in keeping the pests in check. Prominent among those 

 efficient in this work are the species that live within or upon the 

 eggs of the locusts, as the latter exist in that state for the longest 

 period of their lives, and are also then the most helpless and sus- 

 ceptible to injury. The common blister beetles {Epicauta) live, so far 

 as known, in their larval state, exclusively upon the eggs of locusts, 

 and are thus of immense benefit to man. The adults of two species 

 of these beetles, the margined blister beetle, {Epicauta cinerca) and 

 the striped blister beetle {E. vittata) were found very abundantly by 

 Prof. Forbes in Peoria and Knox counties late in September, and. 



