4 THE ORTHOPTERA OF MINNESOTA. 



in hope, watching his growing grain, in graceful, wave-like 

 motion wafted to and fro by the warm summer winds. The 

 green begins to golden; the harvest is at hand. Joy lightens 

 his labor as the fruit of past toil is about to be realized. 

 The day breaks with a smiling sun that sends his ripening 

 rays through laden orchards and promising fields. Kine and 

 stock of every sort are sleek with plent}-, and all the earth 

 seems glad. The da}- grows. Suddenly the sun's face is 

 darkened, and clouds obscure the sky. The J03' of the morn 

 gives way to ominous fear. The day closes, and ravenous 

 locust-swarms have fallen upon the land. The morrow 

 comes, and oh ! what a change it brings ! The lertile land of 

 promise and plenty has become a desolate waste, and old 

 Sol, even at his brightest, shines sadly through an atmos- 

 phere alive with myriads of glittering insects. Falling upon 

 a cornfield, the insects convert in a few hours the green and 

 promising acres into a desolate stretch of bare, spindling 

 stalks and stubs. Covering each hill by hundreds ; scramb- 

 ling from row to row like a lot of young famished pigs let 

 out to their trough ; insignificant individually, but mightv 

 collectively, they sweep clean a field quicker than would a 

 whole herd of hungry steers. Imagine hundreds of square 

 miles covered with such a ravenous horde, and one can get 

 some realization ot the picture presented in many parts of 

 the country west of the l^lississippi during years of locust 

 invasion. Their flight may be likened to an immense snow- 

 storm, extending from the ground to a height at which our 

 visual organs perceive them only as minute, darting scintil- 

 lations, leaving the imagination to picture them indefinite 

 distances beyond. It is a vast cloud of animated specks, 

 glittering against the sun. On the horizon the\' often appear 

 as a dust tornado, riding upon the wind like an ominous 

 hail storm, eddying and whirling about like the wild, dead 

 leaves in an autumn storm, and finally sweeping up to and 

 past you with a power that is irresistible. They move mainly 

 with the wind, and when there is no wind they whirl about 



