﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 189 



PRAIRIE FIRES vs. THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCUST. 



The notion has got into the heads of a good many people, that 

 there is some connection between prairie fires and the Locust visita- 

 tions. Having already discussed the subject in the columns of the 

 New York Tribune^ I will here repeat what I there said : 



The Kansas FavmerXov September 23cllast, contained aleno;thy and hortatory article- 

 on the effects of jirairie lires. The burden of the article was to prove that all misfor- 

 tune that had befallen the fair State of Kansas was in one way or another attributable 

 to the custom of burning- over the prairies. In the words of the writer : '• The un- 

 broken succession of curses that have attiicted this and neio:hboring counties *-" * all 

 spring from the one first grand cause, the burning of the prairie grasses," and he then 

 goes on to demonstrate, as he believes, that burning the grasses from the face of the 

 earth had been the one sreat cause of drouth, hot winds, locusts and short crops. The 

 drouth, hot winds, and grasshopper raids of 18G0 are attributed to the universal 



ward, and of putting between them and the troublesome frontier hunters a " wide,, 

 black and impa^ssable waste"— now to the Texan cattle traders who, on their way home 

 from Abeline, tired the prairies on all sides, so that it was burned off "from the North 

 pole to the Gulf of Mexico." The disasters of 1874 were confessedly not preceded by 

 such general conflagrations, but the reduced snow-fall in the mountains is made respon- 

 sible for that Dortion of the 1S74 disaster which prairie fires did not produce. 



The writer then goes on to state some well-known principles of radiation and tO' 

 explain that all simoons or hot scorching winds have their origin in desert countries, 

 and that '' it matters not whether the country is an original desert or whether it is made 

 so by the action of our Western prairie lires. For all present purposes the two are 

 reduced to a common level, and produce a common result— drouth, hot winds, and 

 locusts." Having thus traced the cause of drouth to prairie fires, the article goes on 

 to show how the locusts are a consequence of drouth. The author first asserts that the 

 Sts,te has never been 'Wisited by these destructive locusts except during seasons of 

 drouth and hot winds," basing"his assertion partly on the fact that Kansas never suf- 

 fered from these insects durin'f? fruitful j^ears, 1 cannot say how well founded is the 

 assertion, but the latter statement is a simple truism not necessarily proving the asser- 

 tion. When we remember also the number of drouthy years that have not been 

 succeeded by locust invasions the assertion loses much of its force. As a single in- 

 stance, let us recall the unprecedented drouth of 1S71. This was not preceded, that I 

 am aware of, by any unusual number of prairie fires ; but it was the indirect cause oi" 

 most remarkable and destructive conflagrations all over the Western country during; 

 the Fall of the same year. Nor was it succeeded by locust invasions, as it should have 

 been were the position of the writer in the Kansas Farmer well taken. 



The reason given why the locusts can only come in drouthy seasons, is, that they 

 cannot fly in a moist atmosphere, and the facts that they do not readily fly early in the 

 morning, and that the farther east you go, or, in other words, the more moist the 

 atmosphere becomes, the insects dmiinish in number and consequent power for harm.. 

 In further support of this view, it is asserted that at Kansas City, "where two rivers 

 connect with their wide belts of timber shade, with an old settled country surrounding- 

 them, so that prairie fires cannot exist, we find no locusts." The author having: proved, 

 in this manner, and to his own satisfaction, the connection between burning grass and' 

 locusts, closes with a graphic picture of what might have been had misfortune not 

 frowned upon the people, and an earnest appeal to the former— not in one township or 

 section, but over the whole State— to cease burning the prairie, as the only radical cure 

 for all these evils. Now, if he has reasoned Avell, it is of the utmost importance for the 

 people of Kansas to follow his advice, and the subject is, consequently, well worth a 

 little attention. I will, therefore, give my reasons for believing that while some partial 

 truths have been stated in his thesis, the general conclusions are false and misleading: 



1.— It is by no means proved that the simoons which occasionally sweep over our 

 Western States and Territories have their origin in any part of that vast prairie country. 

 Some of the more local of these hot, dry winds may originate or acquire their peculiarly 

 high temperature on the mauvaises terres of Wyoming or the table lands of Arizona 

 and Mexico ; but the more general simoons most probably have their origin at a far 

 greater distance from us, viz., in the tropics. These simoons in Missouri always blow 

 from the southwest, in Kansas from south, southwest, and in Eastern Colorado south,. 



