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quent opportunities for so doing than any Philosopher has. On the 

 other hand, until the name of an insect is scientifically ascertained, 

 everything that is said about it amounts to little more than guess- 

 work, and groping round in the dark, and the balance of probabilities. 

 We may, it is true, sometimes solve the scientific conundrum, as I 

 have myself attempted to do in the present case, and believe that we 

 have found the correct solution. But it cannot be too often repeated 

 that, "Believing is not Tcnowingj and faith is not science." 



The practical man will, perhaps, think that, of whatever theo- 

 retical interest these long-winded discussions on the nativity of cer- 

 tain broods of Grasshoppers may be, they are of no manner of prac- 

 tical importance. But the practical man, if he so think, will be, for 

 once in his life, mistaken. Let it only be conceded that Hateful 

 Grasshoppers, after being raised from the egg in 1867 in the lowlands 

 of Kansas and Missouri, can generate freely the same year in the low- 

 lands of Nebraska and Iowa — for it must be remembered that the 

 Grasshoppers that afflicted the two last-named countries in the 

 autumn of 1867 are said to have laid millions of eggs^-and no good 

 reason can be given, why Hateful Grasshoppers, raised from the egg 

 in 1868 in IS'ebraska and Iowa, should not generate freely in Illinois 

 in the autumn of that year; and so on indefinitely for a long series 

 of years. In other words, upon this seemingly mere theoretical ques- 

 tion, that has been discussed at such tedious length, hangs the purely 

 practical and highly important question, whether or not we folks in 

 Illinois, and in other States still further to the east, are likely to be 

 afflicted in the future by the Hateful Grasshopper for nobody knows 

 how many years. If, on the contrary, every swarm of Hateful Grass- 

 hoppers raised in the lowlands is always barren, and if every swarm of 

 them that is capable of laying fertile eggs must necessarily, as I firmly 

 believe, have been raised from the egg in its native alpine home, away 

 up in the canons (kanyons) of the Eocky Mountains, then there must 

 be some geographical limit or other to the region of lowland country, 

 which they are physically capable of reaching. It would be absurd, 

 for example, to imagine for one instant that a Grasshopper-army, 

 starting from the Eocky Mountains, could in one season fly all the 

 way to France or England, or even as far as the Atlantic seaboard of 

 the United States. Hence, allowing that there is some geographical 

 limit to the flight of such an army, we have but to recur to historical 

 facts to find what that limit has hitherto been ; and we may then infer 

 with moral certainty that for the future — all other influencing circum- 

 stances continuing the same — the geographical range of a swarm of 



