46 



surplus goes on increasing and very soon causes a greater drain on the 

 vegetation that forms their bill of fare. Supposing that a single 

 sage hen will destroy on an average 100 locusts each day during 

 the months of June, July, and August, the removal of this bird from 

 the field of action will mean at least 9,000 grasshoppers saved to swell 

 the army of these insects that may go on eating and propagating. If 

 half of these should be females, and each one should deposit its normal 

 quota of loo eggs, there would be a possible 150,000 more of these 

 insects than if the bird had not been killed. But when we destroy the 

 birds V)y the hiuidreds of thousands the possibilities become startling, 

 and this solution to the problem seems more than probable. 



Aside from the killing off of these birds by man, it is stated that 

 they are destroyed to a considerable extent by grazing sheep which 

 break up their nests. While conversing with an intelligent sheepman 

 and herder on this feature of the subject, he mentioned the fact that 

 he had heard of more than a hundred nests being thus destroyed in 

 a single year on Hams Fork in western Wyoming. Whether or not 

 the destruction of locusts by the trampling of sheep will equal the 

 number that would have been killed by the l)irds thus destroyed, I am 

 not prepared to state at this time. 



The species of grasshoppers concerned in the depredations on culti- 

 vated tracts in the vicinity of Douglas and Casper, Wj^o., were: M. 

 hivittafus, M. atlanls, M.femur-ruhriiiii,'Andi Camnfulapelhiclda; while 

 the ones most abundant on the range were Aulocara elliotti, A. femo- 

 rata^ Mestohregma jxirdalinum^ Melanoplus packardii^ M. infantilis^ 

 M. occidentalh, and several others. 



While occupied in other work in portions of Dawes and Sioux coun- 

 ties during June, July, and August, 1901, the writer gave consider- 

 able attention to the locust problem as it existed there. A couple of 

 students who were engaged in making collections of various forms of 

 the animal life of northwestern Nebraska were also instructed to pay 

 particular attention to these insects in the region being worked by 

 them. The forms that frequent both cultivated and uncultivated 

 grounds were found to be unusually abundant over much of the country 

 traversed. Still some sections were much more overrun ])y them than 

 others. Especially was this found to be the case in portions of Dawes 

 and Sioux counties, Nebr. In the latter county in particular the 

 insects were most plentiful on the slopes adjoining the Pine Ridge and 

 for a few miles away, but not so on the table-lands nor in the Hat 

 Creek Valley itself. In many places the insects were so numerous as 

 to cause a shortage in the feed on the range notwithstanding the great 

 amount of rain that fell here during the early part of the year. As 

 noted in other localities, some species of insects normally rare in this 

 section of the State were found to be present in large numbers. 



Not only were the " native" locusts abundant throughout the western 



