THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCUST IN’ 1882. 21 
fires. At several points we made small collections of the locusts, as 
well as of other insects which were to be found during the short interval 
allotted to feeding the horses. These differed in no respect from those 
already collected while coming down the river. 
Our second day’s journey was over a portion of country much like 
that in the neighborhood of our camp on Mill Creek west of Fort 
McLeod, as a great portion of it was among the northern foot-hills of 
the Cypress Hills. Here the vegetation was ranker, and at many points 
the grasses sufficiently long and thick for good hay. Trees of a few vari- 
eties somewhat common, but not numerous, and fine streams of good 
water were the attractive features of this portion of Her Majesty’s 
domain, and distinguish it from all the remainder of these great and 
lonely plains through which we had been traveling for the past three 
weeks. This range of hills is a kind of an oasis in the desert, so to 
speak. TheCypress Mountains—or, more properly speaking, the Cypress 
Hills—are not very extensive, being but about 60 miles from east to 
west and half that distance from north to south. The country com- 
prised in them is very rough in parts, and in others quite level, though 
elevated, the summit being a plateau. This is bounded by a timbered 
belt to the west and north, with an occasional grove on the east. From 
this elevated plateau, and particularly from the timbered portions, nu- 
merous small streams of good water run off to the surrounding and 
lower country, where it is for the most part evaporated in small lakes 
and ponds. These streams have all worn for themselves deep canons, 
or what in this western country are termed coulees, thus making travel 
very difficult in certain directions, and particularly so by the route we 
passed. It is useless for me to go over all this country, piece by piece, 
as it differs but little in its general characters from that already par- 
tially described in the foregoing pages. Suffice it to say that the greater 
part of it is admirably adapted to the breeding of C. spretus and a few 
allied forms of locusts. 
After leaving the Cypress Hills behind, we crossed a vast expanse of 
nearly level prairie, well grassed, with a loose, sandy, clay soil, well im- 
pregnated with various alkalies. This section, also, is admirably fitted 
for the rearing of locust swarms. In fact the entire country between the 
Rockies on the west and the Souris River on the east is one vast hot- 
bed, calculated to produce the largest and healthiest swarms in America. 
These breeding grounds must not be understood to lie altogether within 
Canadian territory, for such is not the case. We, too, in the United 
States, have a continuation of these cradles of the ravaging pest in the 
features of western Dakota, of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Ne- 
vada, Oregon, and a small portion of southeastern Washington Terri- 
tory, as well as in some of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, and New 
Mexico. But with us these permanent breeding localities are more 
“separated by high mountain ranges, timber belts, and bad-lands, as well 
as desert and sage-brush regions. 
