﻿190 SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT 



or a few points east of south ; and their injurious and scorching" effects are not unfre- 

 quently felt before the frost in Kansas and the countrj^ to the west is fairly out of the 

 ground. 2.— It is well known that the buffalo grass rang-es over a vast extent of our 

 Western plains, and that it does not furnish a very dense or thoroui^h eoveriM<«:, even 

 when unburned. 3.— My own observations for the past fourteen years in this Western 

 prairie country lead me to the conclusion that fires more ofcen succeed than precede 

 drouth, and that they may more justly be looked upon as a result than as a cause of 

 excessive dry weather ; and the prevailing belief that large conflagrations or extensive 

 hres are conducive to rain, bears on this point. 4. — Whenever grass is burned durinof 

 the growino: season, the old and drier blade is soon succeeded by a green and succulent 

 one, which has far greater power to attract and retain moisture; while if burned in 

 Winter time the evaporation from the soil can be thereby but slightly affected, because 

 of the weakened power of the sun, and the snows which usually cover and protect. 

 ■">. — Drouths are by no means confined to that portion of the country subject to the 

 locust invasions. 6. — The reason why locusts are more sluggish and less inclined to fly 

 at morn than at noon is not so much a question of the comparative density of the atmos- 

 phere as of the difference in temperature. All diurnal insects are sluggish in the cool 

 of the morning, and their activity increases witli the rising of the thermometer ; and 

 flight, whether of bird or insect, is, I conceive, easier, coeteris paribus, in a dense than in 

 -an attenuated atmosphere. 7.— The reason why the Rocky Mountain Locust does uo 

 damage in the Eastern States, and never reaches beyond a line drawn at a i-ough esti- 

 mate along longitude 17° west from Washing:ton, is, 1 take it, rather because, first, there 

 is a dellnice limit to its power of migration from its native home in a single season; 

 .second, because the new conditions which it meets with in the lower country forming 

 the eastern limit, injuriously affect it and kill it off in the course of one or two years. 

 8-— The statement about the Kansas City region is simply incorrect, as the locusts were 

 thick around that city the present year. 1). — As the Eocky Mountain Locust uuiUiplies 

 only in the Kocky Mountain region, its descent into the plains to the East where it can- 

 not thrive, cannot well be affected by the burning of the grass on those plains. 



Having thus given some facts which militate against the conclusions arrived at in 

 the. Kansas Farmer urticlQAetwi now consider, as a still farther offset against tliose 

 conclusions, the benefit resulting from the burning of prairies. Fearful as are the 

 ravages of locusts, they are only periodically as general and widespread as tliey were 

 the presentyear, and if we consider the annual damage done to the crops of Kaiis is by 

 anj' one insect, the Chinch Bug must, I think, be set down as a greater enemy to the 

 Kansas farmer than the Hateful Locust. Even this year, in tlie eastern portion 

 of that Stat(!, the chinch bugs, aided by the excessive dry weather, had so depleted, by 

 their myriad pumping beaks, the later ripening cereals, that these would have made 

 but a very poor return for the labor spent upon them, even had the locusts not made 

 their advent. Now there are no better preventive measures against the injuries of the 

 Chinch Bng than the burning of the grass on our prairies and around our cultivated 

 ' fields, and the destruction, by the same means, of weeds, leaves, corn-stalks and all 

 other litter and rubbish around such fields, and as far as possible within the woods. 

 For the Chinch Bug hibernates under just such shelter as this litter affords, and the 

 proper season to at'tack it is in the Wintertime, and not at or just before harvest, when 

 it, in great measure, bafHes human control. 



This statement might be substantiated by a long list of facts in the insect's econ- 

 omy, which it is unnecessary to mention here, and I'will simply add in testimony that 

 in Illinois, before the country was as thickly settled as now, and when immen-e tires 

 annually swept over her prairies, the ravages of the Chinch Bug were scarely known. 

 It is therefore very patent that the judicious burning of the dead grasses, especially in 

 the vicinity of cultivated fields, will reduce the ravages of this worst of the farmer's 

 pests, and the same will hold true of the False Chicli Bug {Nysius destructor), which 

 affects our garden vegetables and other tender-leaved plants in the same way as the 

 genuine Clunch Bug affects our cereals. It is also true of many other destructive 

 insects which shelter under dead grass and herbage during the Winter. But, most 

 important of all, it is also true of the young locusts and of locust eggs, immense num- 

 bers of which undoubtedly get destroyed by such fires. A strong impression also pre- 

 vails among farmers, and it Is not without foundation, that the burning of our prairies 

 is beneficial in that it returns at once the potash of the plant to the soil, instead of 

 through the slower process of decomposition. From these premises I think we may 

 safely draw the following conclusions : 



!•— That the non-burning of the prairies will not prove a cure for all the ills that 

 Kansas is subject to. 2. — That, on the contrary, the judicious burning of such prairies 

 will prove a measurable cure for some of her niost serious ills. Indeed, there is only 

 one way in which there can be any real connection between the burning of prairies and 

 the ravages of the Rocky Mountain Locust, and that connection is through the remote 

 past, and altogether beyond our present control. h\ the report of the Chief Signal 



