332 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1944 
where a broad belt of the fertile Siberian lands produces not only 
grain in abundance, but also grasshoppers which take their toll of 
the harvest. South of that belt, Soviet Middle Asia, producing cotton, 
fruit, etc., is subject to ravages of the Asiatic migratory (Locusta 
migratoria migratoria) and the Moroccan (Dociostaurus maroccanus ) 
locusts. Farther east, in China, the Oriental migratory locust (Locusta 
migratoria manilensis) has repeatedly caused wholesale famines, and’ 
is actually causing untold miseries at present. The range of this 
locust extends to the Philippine Islands, where records of its ravages 
are found in the earliest Spanish chronicles, and to Borneo, Celebes, 
Indo-China and the Malayan peninsula. 
Returning westward again, we meet the vast zone where the desert 
locust (Schistocerca gregaria) holds its sway over agriculture, which 
is here carried out always under precarious conditions, making its 
products particularly precious to the population, so that a loss of 
harvest amounts to a major catastrophe. It is this desert locust that — 
has been known to man since Biblical times, and which is still as 
active as it was thousands of years ago. The area of its depredations 
is enormous, stretching from India in the east to the Atlantic coast 
of Africa in the west, and from Russian Middle Asia in the north to 
below the Equator in eastern Africa. The tropical parts of Africa also 
have to cope with two other kinds of locust, the African migratory 
(Locusta migratoria migratorioides) and the red (Nomadacris sep- 
temfasciata) locust. The latter extends its ravages to South Africa, 
which, in addition, has a very serious problem in the endemic brown 
locust (Locustana pardalina). 
Australia, the continent where agricultural development started rela- 
tively recently, but where it has made great strides, is already paying 
a heavy tax to locusts and grasshoppers. 
Turning to the Western Hemisphere, both the United States and 
Canada have to wage an almost incessant war against grasshoppers, 
while wide regions in Central and South America are periodically dev- 
astated by swarms of the American locust (Schistocerca paranensis). 
Thus, none of the five continents is free from these pests, which, in 
fact are absent only from the forest and the tundra belts in the north, 
from the equatorial forests, and from the high mountains. The regions 
either permanently infested by them or subject to their periodical in- 
cursions include no less than 77 separate countries (fig. 1). 
WHAT LOCUSTS COST THE WORLD 
Beginning with the Egyptian locust plague, described in the Bible, 
there runs through history a tragic tale of devastations caused by 
locusts, followed by famines decimating populations of whole countries. 
Thus, in the Roman colonies of Cyrenaica and Numidia no less than 
