﻿OP THE STATE ENTOMOLOQIST. 133 



or to the compilation published in this country by Frank Cowan.* It 

 suffices here to state that the injuries by locusts in the desert coun- 

 tries bordering mountain ranges in the East, are by no means matters 

 of past history only, but that they are felt occasionally at the present 

 time as they have been for all time past. In 186G, during the same 

 year as our previous great invasion, Algeria and the whole country 

 in the north of Africa, was severely visited, causing the famine of 1867, 

 and the epidemics which followed ; and even in 1S74, these insects 

 caused serious alarm in the same parts of Africa ; and M. H. Brocard 

 tells us that in the three subdivisions of Constantino, Setif and Batna, 

 4,820 hectolitres (about 14,000 bushels) of eggs were collected.! The 

 species most conspicuous in its devastations, especially in Central 

 Europe, is the Migratory Locust ( (Edlpoda migraloria, Linn), though 

 in Africa and Asia the Acridium perigrinum and the Caloptenus 

 Italicits have similar destructive and migratory powers. All these 

 insects belong to the same family as our own species, and the last 

 named, even to the same genus. 



[Fig. 30.] 



JUGRATORY LOCDST OF EUROPE. 



While the chronological record of Locust invasions and devasta- 

 tions in the " Old World," is full and complete, the record of such in- 

 vasions in our own country, has never been fully written. The most 

 complete record that I know of, is that by Alexander S. Taylor, of 

 Monterey, Cal., published in the Smithsonian Report for 1858, (pp. 200- 

 :213), to which I am indebted for the earlier accounts, which follow: 

 From what is here given, it is very evident that these insects have 

 occasionally proved great plagues from the earliest settlement of the 

 country; and there can be no doubt that from time immemorial, or 

 since our continent assumed its present configuration, they have from 

 time to time played the same role of devastators, and that the only 

 exceptional circumstance about the 1874 irruption, compared to those 

 of former years, was the larger area of settled and cultivated country 

 devastated, and the consequent greater amount of distress entailed. 



•Curious History of Insects, pp. 101—31, Phila., 18G5, 

 -\.Comptcs Rendus, Paris Academy, Jan. 25, 1S7.'). 



