﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 169 



wilh a younger brother, to pick up the fallen wheat heads for threshing ; they amounted 

 to several bushels. 



Their next attack was upon the Indian corn and potatoes. They stripped the 

 leaves and ate out the silk from the corn, so that it was rare to harvest a full ear. 

 Amono: forty or fifty bushels of corn spread out in the corn-room, not an ear could be 

 found not mottled with detached kernels. 



While these insects were more than usually abundant in the town generally, it was 

 in the field 1 have described that they appeared in the greatest intensity. After they 

 had stripped everything from the field, they began to emigrate in countless numbers. 

 They crossed the highway and attacked the vegetable garden. I remember the curious 

 appearance of a large, flourishing bed of red onions, whose tops they first literally ate 

 up, and not content with that, devoured the interior of the bulbs, leaving the dry ex- 

 ternal covering in place. The provident care of my mother, who covered the bed with 

 chaff from the stable floor, did not save them, while she was complimented the next 

 year for so successfully sowing the garden down to grass. Tlie leaves were stripped 

 from the apple trees. They entered the house in swarms, reminding one of the locusts 

 of Egypt, and, as we walked, they would rise iu countless numbers and fly away in 

 clouds. 



As the nights grew cooler they collected on the spruce and hemlock slumps and log 

 fences, completely covering them, eating the moss and decomposed surface of the wood, 

 and leaving the surface clean and new. They would perch on the west side of a stump, 

 where they could feel the warmth of the sun, and work around to the east side in the 

 morning as the sun reappeared. The foot-paths in the fields were literally covered 

 with their excrements. 



During the latter part of August and the first of September, when the air was still 

 dry, and for several days in succession a high wind prevailed from the northwest, the 

 k'custs frequently rose in the air to an immense bight. By looking up at the sky in the 

 middle of & clear day, as nearly as possible in the direction of the sun, one may descry 

 a locust at a great llight. These insects could thus be seen in swarms, appearing like 

 so many thistle-blows, as they expanded their wings and were borne along toward the 

 sea before the wind ; myriads of them were drowned in Casco bay, and I remember 

 hearing that they frequently dropped on the decks of coasting vessels. Cart loads of 

 dead bodies remained in the fields, forming in spots a tolerable coating of manure. 



Mr. J. S. Smith says that he has seen "hackmatack trees almost 

 covered with them, and entirely stripped of their leaves."* 



All these accounts agree in referring the injury to the common 

 Red-legged Locust; but as I am fully persuaded that this species, as 

 found in Illinois and Missouri, is incapable of any extended flight,f I 

 could not help feeling that some other species had been confounded 

 with it, and had played the part of migratory locust in the White 

 Mountain regions of Maine and New Hampshire. It was with satis- 

 faction therefore that, upon examining the locusts sent me by Mr 

 Colby, I found them to belong to a new and different species, smaller 

 than either the Rocky Mountain or the Red-legged species, but in 

 structure and relative length of wing much more nearly resembling 

 the former than the latter; in other words, its relative length of wing 

 enables it to Hy with almost the same facility as its Rocky Mountain 

 congener. This species may be called the Atlantic Migratory Locust, 

 and is described below, in comparison with its close allies: 



Caloptenus Atlaxis N. sp. — Length to tip of abdomen 0.70—0.85 inch; to tip 

 of closed wings 0.92— -1.05 inches. At once distinguished from femur-rubrum by the 



* Rep. Connecticut State Bd. of Agr. 1872, p. 363. 



1 1 do not mean by this that it is incapable of rising in the air; but I am quite sure that as found in 

 St. Louis county it is incapabk- of any such flights as spretus takes. In the higher parts of the countiy, 

 wtiether east or west, the power of flight may be greater. 



