134 



The true Hateful Grasshopper must be carefully distinguished 

 from the common Eed-legged Grasshopper (Caloptenus femur-ru- 

 hrum, DeGeer,) which swamis everywhere from Massachusetts to Min- 

 nesota, and from Pennsylvania to Illinois. The unpractised observer, 

 indeed, would very readily confound the two species; for in reality 

 they differ in nothing but the comparatively much longer wings of 

 the former, which enable it to ily vast distances; whereas the latter 

 does not usually fly more than a few yards at a stretch. Harris re- 

 ports of the Red-legged Grasshopper, (or, as he prefers to call it, 

 "the Red-legged Locust,") that in certain seasons it almost entirely 

 consumes the grass of the New England salt-marshes, and then emi- 

 grates on to the uplands, devouring on its way grass, maize, garden- 

 vegetables, potato-tops, clover and tobacco-plants. "These insects,"' he 

 continues, "will even destroy in a few hours the garments of laborers, 

 hung up in the field while they are at work ; and, with the same vorac- 

 ity, they devour the loose particles Avhich the saw leaves upon the sur- 

 face of pine-boards, and which, when separated, are termed saw-dust." 

 {Inj. Ins. pp. 168 — 170.) As the reader will have noticed, the Rocky 

 Mountain species has the same omnivorous propensities. It is prob- 

 ably to this Red-legged Grasshopper that Mr. S. T. Kelsey, of Kan- 

 sas, refers, when he says that he "lias known Grasshoj^pers in west- 

 ern New York to destroy a large proportion of the growing crops, 

 and then deposit their eggs,'' as the other species did in Kansas in 

 1866. {Prairie Farmer, June 15, 1867.) While I was attending 

 the State Fair held at Freeport in North Illinois in the year 1859, 

 I heard (as I have already recorded elsewhere) from the farmers of 

 that neighborhood great complaints of the damage done them that 

 year by Grasshoppers. And Mr. Arnold, of DeKalb County, which 

 also lies near the northern boundary of this State, says that his oat- 

 crop in 1861 "was diminished at least 10 bushels per acre by the 

 Grasshoppers, who ate off the heads, the ground being literally cov- 

 ered with grain."* ,In Fulton Co., Central Illinois, "myriads of 

 young grasshoppers" are reported to have appeared "in the meadows, 



*See, on these two points, Trans. III. State Agr. Soc. V. p. 497. 



