﻿166 SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT 



ing and thriving as the Colorado Potato-beetle has done, this whole 

 valley would soon become a desert waste. A wise Providence has 

 decreed that thus far it shall go, and no further. 



It will surely be a source of satisfaction to the farmers east of the- 

 lino indicated to feel assured against any future invasion by, or any 

 serious injury from, an army of insects so prodigiously numerous a& 

 actually to obscure the light of the sun, and so ruinously destructive 

 as to devour almost every green thing that grows ! 



WHAT INJURY MAY BE EXPECTED IN MISSOURI IN 1875? 



The subject we have just been considering, brings us very natu^ 

 rally to the question propounded in the above heading. It is also a 

 question of vital importance to the farmers in our western counties,, 

 and one that will be repeatedly asked this coming Spring; and as there 

 prevails an erroneous impression that I have given it as my opinion 

 that no damage can possibly result from the young hatching out in 

 1875, 1 will here repeat what I actually said on the subject last Autumn.. 



Setting aside possible but not probable injury from a new inva- 

 sion, we may consider the probable injury that will result in ISTS* 

 from the progeny of those which came in 1874. The eggs which are 

 deposited on southerly hill-sides often hatch before cold weather sets 

 in, if the Fall is warm and protracted, while many hatch soon after the 

 frost is out of the ground in the Spring. Yet the great bulk of them- 

 will not hatch till into April. That most of the eggs will hatch may 

 be taken for granted unless we have very abnormal climatic condi- 

 tions, and unprecedentedly wet and cold weather following a mild and 

 thawing spell. The young issuing from these eggs will also, in all 

 probability, do much damage, as they did in the Spring and Summer 

 of 1867. But the actual damage cannot be foretold, as so much 

 depends on circumstances. In 1867, in many counties of Kansas and 

 Missouri, where the ground had been filled with eggs the previous- 

 Fall, little harm was done in the Spring — so small a percentage of the 

 eggs came to anything and so unmercifully were the young destroyed 

 by natural enemies. A severe frost kills the young after they have 

 hatched, where a moderate frost does not affect them. In Missouri, if 

 we have no weather that proves fatal to either eggs or young, consid- 

 erable damage may be expected, but not as much as in the country to 

 the West; for, as" already stated, we received the more scattering 

 remains of the vast army, and the eggs are neither as numerous, nor 

 will they hatch as early in our territory as farther West. Following a 

 rather mild February the March of '67 was a very severe one, the 

 thermometer frequently indicating 18 degrees below zero,, and accord^ 



