152 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



practice of giving the name of locust to a totally different 

 insect, belonging to an entirely different order." 



The care which Mr. Bethune has taken to establish the 

 correct nomenclature, like the rules of the British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science, instituted with a similar 

 object, tends to increase rather than remove the difficulty in 

 question. The terms grasshopper and locust have reference 

 simply to magnitude; the smaller species being called grass- 

 hoppers, and the larger ones locusts. Until this is admitted 

 there will be no solution of this difficult subject. However, 

 there is no doubt that the locust of North America is the 

 Calopterus spretus, a species of the class Orthoptera, and the 

 family Acrididae. In giving this creature the credit, or rather 

 discredit, of all the mischief done in the United States, it is 

 necessary to point out the existence of other and larger 

 locusts in the United States, some of which attain an expanse 

 of wing of nine or ten inches. The account given by Bethune 

 of the ravages of Calopterus spretus is as follows, omitting 

 the account prior to 1874: — 



" The Plague of Locusts in 1874. — Let us now turn to the 

 terrible visitation of the present year, from the effects of 

 which so many thousands are now suffering the privations of 

 famine throughout immense tracts of country. Last year 

 (1873) the locusts or grasshoppers were stated to have 

 inflicted considerable damage upon crops of various kinds in 

 some of the Western States, principally Nebraska and 

 Kansas ; here and there also in Minnesota, Iowa, and Dakota, 

 there were comparatively trifling visitations. But in the 

 month of July of this year there began one of the most serious 

 invasions that has ever occurred in the West. In point of 

 numbers, and in extent of area affected, the plague was 

 probably no greater than on some previous occasions, notably 

 that of 1855 that we have referred to; the great difference, 

 however, is caused by the fact that twenty years ago the 

 country west of the Mississippi River was an almost 

 uninhabiied wilderness of prairie, while now it is traversed 

 by a net-work of railways, covered with populous towns and 

 villages, and occupied to a very large extent by multitudes of 

 industrious people. Twenty years ago the locusts affected 

 the food-supply, perhaps, of the buffalo, the Indian, and the 

 scattered frontier settlers, but now their ravages cause desti- 



