﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 97 



son county ; Dr. G. Y. Salmon, Clinton, Henry county ; Dr. G. N. V. 

 Dodson, Nevada, Vernon county, and F. G. Tygard, Butler, Bates 

 county, and to the presiding judges of such other counties as are 

 known to need relief. 



The third of June was well observed in most parts of the State, 

 and the observance of the day was productive of good not only by 

 the collections taken up in the different churches for the sufferers, 

 but by reassuring and encouraging many good people who could have 

 been reassured in no other way. 



NOT A DIVINE VISITATION. 



There are those, both among the clergy and the laity, who deem 

 such a visitation as that from which our western counties suffered, an 

 expression of Divine wrath, for the sin and corruption of the people — • 

 a chastisement of the Lord. They claim that the " wickedness, fraud, 

 falsehood, and corruption " which, as they assert, "abound in every 

 department of society," are at the bottom of it. They consider it im- 

 pious to attempt to avert the evil. These opinions were boldly pro- 

 claimed by a correspondent of the St. Louis Eepuhlican. The ex- 

 pression of such opinions was a downright insult to the hard-working, 

 industrious, and suffering farmers of the western country, who cer- 

 tainly deserve no more to be thus visited by Divine wrath than the 

 people of other parts of the State and country. Persons who promul- 

 gate such views are little removed in intelligence from the poor crack- 

 brained negress whom I saw in the streets of Warrensburg shouting 

 and imploring the people not to kill a locust, since God Almighty 

 had sent them ; or from the poor deluded Arabs who make no effort to 

 destroy the locusts which they believe to be the " army of the Great 

 God." It is not surprising that people are yet found who hold such 

 views ; for no great calamity ever befell a country which was not attrib- 

 uted, by certain fanatics, to Divine wrath ; but it is surprising that, 

 in this enlightened day, such persons can, without editorial reproof, 

 find circulation for their vagaries in the columns of some of our widely 

 circulating and influential journals. 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



In addition to what was said under this head a year ago, a more 

 detailed account of the process of molting may here be given. In or- 

 der to illustrate this interesting process we will trace an individual 

 through the last molt — from the pupa to the winged insect — as it is the 

 most difficult, and, on account of the larger size of the animal, most 



E R— 26. 



