﻿76 EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT 



have eaten up all the flax, all the wheat and corn, and now are attacking everything- 

 green, even gras?, and three weeks will witness a country as barren as tlie grim deserts 

 of Africa. We must have aid from some source or we shall perish. As I write this 

 the sound of prayer and song is wafted on the breeze through the open window from 

 the church across the way, as a crowded house, numbering some six hundred souls, 

 are offering up, in answer to the proclamation ot Gov. Hardin, their humble prayers 

 for the interposition of Divine Providence to relieve the calamities which are falling 

 with such fury upon this county. May the Lord, in His mercy, take pity upon this 

 afflicted people and save them from the death which will surely overtake them unless a 

 miracle is performed. 



Vernon County. — Hon. William Hall, of Walker, writes, May 20 : 

 "We are in the midst of an army of insects. Between the grasshop- 

 pers and Chinch bugs this county is threatened with famine both for 

 man and beast." From a correspondent of the St. Louis Repuhlicariy 

 June 4, it appears that the ravages were chiefly confined to the north- 

 western portion of the county. 



The other counties of Cedar, Dade, Daviess, Harrison, Hickory, 

 Jasper, Lawrence, McDonald, Polk and Worth, that were visited in 

 1874, suffered comparatively little from the unfledged insects in the 

 following Spring. 



CONDITION OF THINGS IN OTHER STATES. 



Kansas. — The ravages of the young locusts in this State, during 

 the Spring of 1875, were confined to a district about 150 miles in length 

 and 50 miles in breadth, at the widest, along the eastern border. The 

 counties of Doniphan, Brown, Atchison, Jefferson, Leavenworth, 

 Douglass, Labette, Johnson, Miami, Franklin, Linn, Bates and Bour- 

 bon suffered more or less severely. These counties comprised the 

 principal hatching-grounds of the insect, for, although the invading 

 hosts of the previous autumn had been reported as ovipositing in 

 almost every county of the State, time proved that the great bulk of 

 the eggs were laid as the locusts approached their eastward limit. In 

 1874 the greatest damage had been from northwest to southeast, being 

 lightest along the eastern half of the State which the winged insects 

 reached too late to do very serious injury. In 1875 the tables were 

 turned; the eastern portion of the State suffered, and the western 

 counties were little troubled. 



A small proportion of the eggs, which had been deposited in dry, 

 sunny situations, hatched during the autumn of 1874; but there is no 

 evidence that any of the young thus prematurely brought into the 

 world survived the Winter. On the contrary, certain experiments 

 made the following Spring demonstrated the fact that a temperature 

 of 2° below zero was invariably fatal to them. 



The insects were reported as hatching in a few localities, and 

 mostly along river bottoms, as early as the middle of March; but it 



