INJURIOUS INSECTS OF I909Q AND IQIO. lle. 
many of our hard-working and deserving farmers in the counties 
indicated have lost materially, anywhere from a fifth of a crop 
to their entire crop production, and that some are so thoroughly 
discouraged as to think of abandoning farming in Minnesota, 
should interest state authorities sufficiently to cause them to 
inquire into the reason for these periodical invasions, and find a 
remedy. The reason is not hard to find. Large tracts of land 
which have reverted, or which have never been cultivated, held 
by speculators or others, offer ideal places for the egg-laying of 
this pest; and there are thousands of acres of such land in the 
western part of this state, where owners are absolutely indifferent 
to the fact that farmers, endeavoring to make a living on the out- 
skirts of these pest-breeding acres, have to make prodigious efforts 
to secure crops, and frequently fail altogether, because they cannot 
cope successfully with the hordes of grasshoppers pouring in upon 
them from the above-mentioned uncultivated acres. We have a 
grasshopper law in this state; but, inasmuch as the owner or lessee 
of such dangerous land is not obliged by this law to pay for the 
plowing, it is ineffective. We have the names and addresses of 
many of the owners or holders of such land. and a list of their 
property in Wilkin County; and have written some, only to find— 
knowing as they do, the weakness of the law—absolutely indiffer- 
ence, carried to such an extent in one or two cases that they did 
not even take the trouble to answer our letters. There are thou- 
sands of acres of such land in Wilkin County alone—the undis- 
turbed breeding-ground of millions of grasshoppers. In Andrea 
~Township alone we have a record of over 8,000 acres of such land. 
Manifestly a county cannot stand the expense of plowing these 
tracts, even if sufficient men could be secured to properly do the 
work. 
Two ways are open, which would seem to offer at least partial 
relief for this deplorable situation; one, the work of the individual 
farmer, properly directed by experts, aimed at keeping the hop- 
pers off his growing crops, and to that end using intelligently not 
only well known methods, but others which may be discovered 
through investigations of entomologists; and second, the creating 
