﻿a.88 SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT 



for trivial reasons ; but when, as in this instance, the name used for 

 centuries in the older countries, and become familiar as household 

 words through the widely disseminated Scriptures, is substituted by 

 a new one, and transferred to an entirely different insect, there is no 

 excuse for perpetuating the popular error. 



We may talk of shipping a car-load, and of the swriS rising, from. 

 now till doomsday ; and, though, to the intelligent and hypercritical 

 mind the expressions will ever savor of incorrectness; no one is fool- 

 ish enough to try and reform them, because they are universal, wherever 

 the English language is spoken. Change in universal and long estab- 

 lished customs is neither possible, as a rule, nor advisable; and it is 

 doubtful if any reform could be brought about in our present Grego- 

 rian calendar, for instance, even if the advantage of regulating the 

 divisions of the year by the astronomical conditions of the earth's 

 orbit could be fully established. But in a case like that between the 

 use of the terms Locust and Grasshopper, the former, as applied to 

 our Rocky Mountain plague and its allies, has every claim to favor, 

 not only because of having been longer used, and of its now being more 

 universally used than the latter; but because it has a definite mean- 

 ing and agrees with the old systematic name of the family to which 

 the species belongs; while the term "grasshopper" is most loosely 

 applied to almost every field insect that hops. The term locust is, in 

 fact, supposed to be derived from the Latin words locus ustus, which 

 mean a burnt place, and have reference to the desolation, as if by fire, 

 which these insects cause. 



The trivial terms " Colorado," " Red-legged," and " Hateful " have 

 been applied to the species by various writers ; but the name " Rocky 

 Mountain Locust," which I have employed, is expressive of the in- 

 sect's habitat and least open to objection. 



Regarding the scientific name of our insect, it is only necessary to 

 add in addition to what has already been said, that it belongs to 

 the modern genus Melanoplus of Stiil; but just as this author's subdi- 

 visions of certain genera in Coleoptera are not accepted or recognized 

 by many of our best coleopterists, so Melanoplus is not considered 

 as of generic value by some of our best orthopterists ; for which 

 reason I have used the better known and well established genus 

 Caloptenus. The specific name spretus (meaning despised) indicates 

 that, as a species, it was so long overlooked by entomologists, and con- 

 founded with femur-ruhrum. 



