﻿€0 EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT 



July 10. " Grasshoppers are all <rone from Fort Scott. * * The Kansas City 

 markets are abundantly supplied with garden truck, and cheap." 



GENERAL OUTLOOK IN THE SPRING OF 1875. 



The Spring of 1875 brought the farmers of the locust region to a 

 crisis somewhat unusual and peculiar. Two previous years of drouth 

 and chinch bugs, followed by the locust incursion of the previous 

 Fall, had armed the people with unusual energy, born of hope and 

 necessity, and there was everywhere determination to put forth the 

 very best efforts. The opening of the Spring favored the execution of 

 this purpose. Timely rains and bright weather crowned the seeding 

 time with unusual hope, and a much larger acreage of all Spring crops 

 was planted. The experience of previous locust years had been gener- 

 ally forgotton, and no effort to destroy the eggs had been made. The 

 same genial sun that made wheat, oats, corn and flax grow apace, 

 brought into activity myriads of the dreaded destroyers. Scarcely 

 had the farmer begun to rejoice over a prospect of uncommon promise, 

 when he saw his fields invaded by an enemy that overcame his utmost 

 resistance. The severely stricken region, covering an area variously 

 estimated at from 200 to 270 miles from East to West, and from 250 to 

 550 miles from North to South, and embracing portions of Nebraska, 

 Kansas and Missouri, presented a variety of experience, some portions 

 being comparatively exempt from injury, while others wore an 

 aspect of devastation that changed the verdure of Spring into the 

 barrenness of Winter. 



The tract in which the injury done by the destructive enemy was 

 worst, was confined to the two western tiers of Counties in Missouri, 

 and the four tiers of Counties in Kansas, bounded by the Missouri 

 river on the East. The greatest damage extended over a strip 25 miles 

 each side of the Missouri river, from Omaha to Kansas City, and then 

 extending South to the Southwestern limit of Missouri. About three 

 quarters of a million of people were to a greater or less extent made 

 sufi"erers. The experience of different localities was not equal or uni- 

 form. Contiguous farms sometimes presented the contrast of abund- 

 ance and utter want, according to the caprices of the invaders or ac- 

 cording as they hatched in localities favorable to the laying of the 

 eggs. This fact gave rise to contradictory reports, each particular 

 locality generalizing from its own experience. The fact is, however, 

 that over the region described there was a very eeneral devastation, 

 involving the destruction of three fourths of all field and garden 

 crops. 



For the relief of the sufTerers there came the frequent and grow- 

 ing rains, carrying Spring far into the usually droughty Summer, and 



