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"I first noticed these insects on the wing this season on the 27th 

 of June at Fort Leavenworth, when I saw a large number above the 

 tops of the trees flying off in a south-easterly direction. Upon leav- 

 ing the egg, they are of a milky white color and very tender. When 

 they first began to appear in the spring, the cool nights destroyed 

 many. Indeed during the entire time they have been constantly dying 

 by millions; those that remained alive devouring the dead carcasses 

 with the utmost avidity. 



"No general damage has been done in the State this year by the 

 grasshoppers, but some localities have suffered extensively. As be- 

 fore remarked, as soon as they had developed wings, they left us, 

 apparently governed in their course by the wind. We are now quite 

 free of them, and nearly as good crops will be raised as usual." 



While passing down the Mississippi River by steamboat in the 

 middle of August, 18G7, I fell in with Mr. Fowler, a very intelligent 

 farmer from the neighborhood of Chillicothe, Ohio, who, as he told 

 me, had been travelling extensively through Kansas with the view of 

 locating there, and, with business-like forethought, had been making 

 particular inquiries everywhere about this Grasshopper-pest. Accord- 

 ing to my usual practice under such circumstances, I took down from 

 his mouth the following very valuable information respecting the 

 spring hatch of Grasshoppers in Kansas A. D. 1867. 



"When the Grasshoppers hatched out in Kansas in the spring 

 of 1867, they always, even before they acquired wings, kept working 

 gradually in a south-east direction. After their wings had become 

 fully developed, whenever the wind permitted, they took flight and 

 flew in the same south-east direction; and if the wind changed, when 

 they were already in the air, so as to prevent tliem from travelling 

 south-east, they would immediately descend to the earth and wait for 

 a change of wind. Swallows [thought to be Bank Swallows, Hi- 

 rundo riparia'] preyed very extensively on them, and so did the Black- 

 birds {Icterus phoeniceiis,, Linnfeus] ; and a bird like a Night-hawk, 

 usually found on the barren Plains to the west, followed them up and 

 consumed numbers of them. After they had all disappeared, this 

 last bird disappeared also. It was the general opinion of the farm- 

 ers with whom I conversed, that, but for a six-weeks' spell of cold 

 and wet weather in the spring of 1867, which benumbed the young 

 Grasshoppers after they had hatched out, and probably destroyed 

 many of them, the entire crops of the country would have been ruined 

 by them. As it was, according to the closest estimate I can make, 

 which however must only be considered an approximation to the 

 truth, the Grasshoppers took, on the average, during the summer of 



