﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 191 



Officer to the War Department for 1872, will be found an interesting account of the 

 ^reat fires of 1871 in the Northwest, by Prof. J. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee, Wis., in which 

 my learned friend maintains that our extensive Western prairies and plains owe their 

 existence and origin to the ajjency of fire. These fires, encouraged by drouth, and 

 either kindled by accident or intention, have swept over the country for ages, and 

 while they leave the roots of the grass uninjured, they destroy the germs of most other 

 plants, including forest trees ; and Mr. Lapham pictures to himself a long--past struggle 

 between forest and prairie, in which the latter, by the assistance of the Fire King, has 

 gained and held the vantage ground. 



^VHiile 1 do not agree with Prof. Lapham that the remote cause of our prairies 

 can be attributed to fire, yet no one can doubt its agency at the present time in main- 

 taining these prairies and preventing timber growth in the more humid portions of the 

 great prairie region. Bat on this hypothesis there would naturally bo a connection in 

 the past between fires and locusts; for if without fires this whole prairie region had 

 been timbered, the locusts, which are essentially insects of the plains and prairies, 

 could never have become so prodigiously abundant and injurious. On such a hypothe- 

 sis alone can I see any possible connection between prairie fires and locust invasions, 

 and. however much truth there may be in the hypothesis, the fact remains that there is 

 no present connection between the two phenomena. 



APPENDIX 



ARTICLE ON THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCUST, 



The length which this Report has already attained precludes the publishing of any 

 of the many answers to my circular from the different counties of Missouri. There is 

 so much valuable experience, however, in the following letters, by three valued and 

 intelligent correspondents, from Texas and Kansas, that I feel constrained to publish 

 them entire, as a fitting sequel to what 1 have said on the Rocky Mountain Locust : 



Letter from the late Thos. Affleck, of Brenham, Texas, xoritten in 1868. 



About the first week of November, 1867, locusts appeared here, but were announced 

 towards the northwest of us as being on the way some weeks before. They came down 

 from a considerable height in showers about like a fall of snow — their silvery wings 

 contributing to the resemblance. On looking toward the sun, they could be perceived 

 in vast clouds, at a great height, and all steering to the southeast. 



They were busily engaged devastating the crops about Union Hill, five miles to 

 the west, for a week before they made their appearance here, and were nearly two 

 weeks longer in reaching Brenham, seven and a half miles to the south-by -east. They 

 were very few in number to the south and east of that town. 



Immediately on alighting, they began to devour every green thing, possessing 

 ravenous appetites ; and also copulated in great numbers, after which the males gradu- 



