﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 143 



counties of Iowa — the injury being most felt in the last two more 

 thickly settled States. The insects poured in upon this country during 

 the Summer and laid their eggs in all the more eastern portions 

 reached. The cry of distress that went up from the afflicted people 

 of Minnesota in the Fall of that year is still fresh in mind, and the 

 pioneers of West Iowa had to suffer, in addition to the locust devasta- 

 tions, severe damage from a terrific tornado. Great ravages were also 

 committed by locusts in Southern California during the same year. 



THE INVASION OF 1874. 



We now come to the Locust visitation of 1874, which will long be 

 remembered as more disastrous, and as causing more distress and 

 destitution than any of its predecessors. The calamity was national 

 in its character, and the suffering in the ravaged districts would have 

 been great, and death and famine the consequence, had it not been 

 for the sympathy of the whole country and the energetic measures 

 taken to relieve the afflicted people — a sympathy begetting a gene- 

 rosity which proved equal to the occasion, as it did in the case of the 

 great Chicago fire, and which will ever redound to the glory of our 

 free Republic, and of our Union. 



From a very large number of data, culled from every available 

 source, I have prepared the accompanying map, which will at a glance 

 illustrate the country liable to be overrun by this Rocky Mountain 

 scourge, and more especially the territory in the United States east of 

 the mountains, visited in 1874. This last will be seen to embrace the 

 entire States of Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas, and portions of Wyo- 

 ming, Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, Indian Terri- 

 tory and Texas. The heavy, dark lines indicate the area over which 

 the greatest injury was done ; the dotted lines the area which suflfered 

 less, because more sparsely inhabited ; and the fine lines the area 

 which was more or less overrun by them. The insects were doubtless 

 as numerous in the northwestern parts of Wyoming and Dakota, and 

 in Montana, for, in fact, they breed there ; but the country is for the 

 most part so barren and so thinly settled that the reports are very 

 meagre. The damage inflicted in this territory cannot fall far short 

 of fifty millions dollars. That much of the damage resulted from 

 the progeny of the swarms of 1873, which, hatching in the country 

 already indicated, as invaded during that year, ravaged the crops of 

 the country where they hatched, and eventually spread to the south- 

 east, the records abundantly prove; but there was likewise a fresh 

 invasion direct from the mountain region, which added to that of 1873, 

 rendered the year 1874 so memorable. 



