﻿OP THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 135 



dreds of periodicals, and to depend on a number of fugitive articles 

 published during the last twenty years. 



In 1818 and 1819, according to Neill's History of Minnesota, vast 

 hordes of grasshoppers appeared in Minnesota, eating everything in 

 their course ; in some cases the ground being covered three or four 

 inches thick. In the same years they were extremely injurious in the 

 Red River country in Manitoba. In 1820, or the succeeding year, we 

 hear of them falling upon the western counties of Missouri, as des- 

 cribed in the following items: 



•' We were informed bv old residents of West Missouri and some ot the Indians, 

 that long aso, I think it was in 1820, there was just such a visitation of grasshoppers 

 as is now afflicting us. They came in the Autumn by millions, devouring every green 

 tiling, but too late to do much harm. They literally filled the earth with their eggs, 

 and then died. The next Spring they hatched '.out, but did but little harm, and when 

 full-fledged left for parts unknown. Other districts of country have been visited by 

 them, but so far as I could learn, they have done but little harm after the first year." — 

 [S. T. Kelsey, Ottawa, (now of Hutchinson,) Kansas, in Prairie Farmer, June 15, 

 1867, p, 395. 



A Missouri paper publishes a statement by an old settler, that great numbers of 

 grasshoppers appeared in September, 1820, doing much damage. The next Spring 

 they hatched out, destroying the cotton, flax, heinp, wheat and tobacco crops ; but the corn 

 escaped uninjured. About the middle of June they all disappeared, flying off in a 

 southeast direction. — Wester7i Rural, 1867. 



It is reasonable to suppose that these 1820 swarms also ravaged 

 Kansas and the country to the northwest, very much as they did in 

 1874, though no records of the fact are to be found, for the simple 

 reason that the western country was unsettled by farmers. We know 

 that the crops were destroyed in many parts of Manitoba during the 

 same and the previous year, and the migrations of 1819 and 1820 must 

 have been very similar to those of 1873 and 1874. 



In 1845 and again in 1849, we have accounts, from various sources, 

 of their swarming in Texas. In 1855 there was another very general 

 irruption all over the western part of the continent. Says Mr. Taylor, 

 in the Smithsonian Report already alluded to: "Up to the 11th of 

 October, 1855, and commencing about the middle of May, these insects 

 extended themselves over a space of the earth's surface much greater 

 than has ever before been noted. They covered the entire Territories 

 of Washington and Oregon, and every valley of the State of Califor- 

 nia, ranging from the Pacific Ocean to the eastern base of the Sierra 

 Nevada ; the entire Territories of Utah and New Mexico ; the immense 

 grassy prairies lying on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains; 

 the dry mountain valleys of the republic of Mexico, and the countries 

 of Lower California and Central America; and also, those portions of 

 the State of Texas which resemble, in physical charactertstics, Utah 

 and California. The records prove that the locusts extended them- 

 selves, in one year, over a surface comprised within thirty-eight de- 



