﻿OP THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 167 



ing to Mr. W. F. Goble, of Pleasant Ridge, Kansas, who wrote an 

 excellent account of the insect,* this severe weather caused many of 

 the eggs to perish; and he expresses the opinion that "judging from the 

 voraciousness of those that did appear, I doubt not Kansas would 

 have been made a perfect desert if all had lived." 



If after the young hoppers hatch we have much cold wet weather, 

 great numbers of them will congregate in sheltered places and perish 

 before doing serious harm ; but if, on the contrary, our Spring and 

 early Summer prove dry and hot (which is hardly to be expected after 

 the several dry seasons lately experienced) much damage will result 

 from these young locusts, where no effort is made to prevent it. They 

 will ruin most garden truck, do much injury to grain, and aflfect plants 

 very much in the order previously indicated under the head of " Food- 

 plants." They will become more and more injurious as they get older, 

 until, in about two months from the time of hatching, or about the 

 middle of June, they will begin to acquire wings, become restless, 

 and in all probability leave the locality where they were born, either 

 wending their way further South or returning in the direction whence 

 their parents came the previous year. Some bevies may even pass 

 to the eastward of the limit line reached in 1874, and fall upon some 

 of the counties bordering that line; but they will lay no eggs, and 

 will in time run their course and perish from debility, disease and 

 parasites. In 1876 the Rocky Mountain Locust will scarcely be heard 

 of within our borders ; a few remnants from Kansas or Nebraska, or 

 from the country to the southwest, may make their presence mani- 

 fest, if the year should be exceptionally favorable to their develop- 

 ment; but, whether delayed till 1876, or even till 1877, the last one 

 will eventually vanish from Missouri soil, and their race will no more 

 be known among us till — perhaps within the next six or eight years; 

 perhaps not within the next twenty — a fresh swarm wings its way 

 to our borders from the plains along the mountain regions. There 

 is, therefore, no danger of their overrunning the State to the east of 

 the limit line ; nor of their doing permanent injury in the counties 

 they now occupy. 



RAVAGES OF 3IIGKAT0HY LOCUSTS IN THE ATLANTIC STATES. 



We have already seen how the true Rocky Mountain Locust, 

 which rarely reaches the Mississippi, may be distinguished from the 

 Red-legged species, which often mixes with it and is common to a much 

 larger extent of country, and reaches to the Atlantic. We have also 



•Monthly Reports, Dejjt. Agr. 18()7 p. 290. 



