EEPOET OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 229 



have been elaborated to show that there is a certain periodicity in locust 

 visitations and a connection with such visitations and sun-spots. How- 

 ever this may be, no one cognizant of the facts can doubt the connee- 

 t iou between serious locust injury and business depression, or that there 

 ii:is been a certain periodicity in wide-spread locust injury, averagirsjj^ 

 ■.inout every eleven years. This last fact may explain the exceptional 

 Miisitiveness and anxiety which locust increase has this year caused 

 ;i)noi]g the farmers of the trans-Mississippi, as more than the average 

 interval has past since the last serious devastations began and just a 

 tlec^ade since their height was reached." 



We have each year, since the Government investigation of the species 

 began, in 1877, endeavored to accumulate sufficient data to predicate 

 upon the possibilities for the ensuing year, though, as stated in our 

 last annual report, absence from the country and other reasons pre- 

 vented our doing so in 1884. 



Eeports came quite early in the season of great abundance of young 

 locusts hatching out in the Platte Yalley country, and they were suffi- 

 ciently serious to justify our sending out one of the agents of the Di- 

 vision, Mr. Lawrence Bruner, to make investigations and ascertain the 

 facts. His reports proved that the fears were groundless, as the young 

 locusts referred to proved to bo what are known as native or non-migra- 

 tory species which were unusually numerous. Later in the season, how- 

 ever, reports came of injury by, and increase of, locusts in parts of the 

 Northwest, and an investigation ordered of these reports proved that 

 the anxiety felt by the people of the Northwest had more real founda- 

 tion. Mr. Bruner's report of this investigation, which will be found 

 among the reports of agents, shows that not only were the non-migra- 

 tory species very abundant, but that this particular spretus had greatly 

 increased in numbers and was moving in flights to the South and South- 

 east. There is no doubt but that considerable areas within that country 

 have been stocked with eggs, and, should the weather prove favorable 

 to locust development, there maybe considerable injury done in 1886, 

 particularly since Mr. Bruner noticed a scarcity of natural enemies. But 

 there is one encouraging side to this rather foreboding outlook, viz, (1) 

 that the heavy rains and storms which i^re vailed there last autumn 

 were prejudicial to the insects, and (2) that under the most favorable con- 

 ditions to locust increase, the injury, for the various reasons given in the 

 Second Report of the United States Entomological Commission, and 

 chiefly the advance of settlement and cultivation, can never be as wide- 

 spread as it was between 1874 and 1877. 



THE CALIFGENIA MIGRATOKY LOCUST. 



{Melanoplus devastator Scudder.) 



Already in May the correspondence of the Division and the reports in 

 the i^ress showed that the people of California were becoming alarmed 

 at the unusual injury being caused by some locust in California. The 

 injury was done more particularly in the northern portions of the State, 

 and especially in the San Joaquin VaUey. At first there was a good 

 deal of doubt as to what species was concerned in this injury, and not 

 until specimens had been received by us from Profs. C. H. Dwindle and 

 E. W. Hilgard and from Mr. C. W. Brooks, was the species properly 

 determined to be the Melanoplus devastator (Plate YIII, Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 

 and 5). The specimens were from Fresno and Yuba Counties, and in- 

 cluded also a few other species, associated incidentally with devastator^ 



