﻿156 EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT 



the facts is the declaration that 1 do not hesitate to state that there is 

 no possible danger of any general injury in Missouri this Spring, and 

 no probable danger in the Fall ; and to convey my views more fully 

 I reproduce a short article which I last January copimunicated to the 



New York Tribune: 



Some one has announced the fact that there has been a prodiofious number of 

 locust eggs laid all over the nothwest portion of the country l.ying east of the Hocky 

 Mountains. Some one has asserted that the soil of Wyoming, Montana and Dakota is 

 generally and thickly charged with these eggs. Who this some one is with such vast 

 experience that he has examined the soil over such large areas as to make the state- 

 ment, nobody knows. But some careless editor has set the gossip's ball in motion, and 

 it has rolled on from paper to paper, with one change and another, until at last the 

 Boston Journal includes Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska in its portentous scope. "Ob- 

 servations shovv," says this journal, "that last j'ear's grasshoppers deposited immense 

 numbers of eggs, and when the warm weather comes and hatches them, devastation 

 even more than these sections have previously known, will be pretty sure to follow." 

 "Observations show" that some editors are very gullible, and too ready to propagate 

 the sensational, and to disseminate alarming statements on the flimsiest grounds. 

 They publish as fact the veriest on dit, without once inquiring into its probability or 

 caring for the consequences. 



From personal observation in parts of Missouri and Kansas, and from an exten- 

 vSive correspondence, I am able to say that such statements, so lar as these two States 

 are concerned, are entirely groundless; and I have every reason to believe that the 

 same will hold true of Nebraska ; while in Minnesota, the investigations of the com- 

 mission appointed last summer by the Governor, indicate that even where eggs were 

 laid in that State, they mostly perished from excess of moisture, which dissolved the 

 glutinous substance which normally protects and holds them together. That in some 

 parts of the high country lying east of the mountains, especially toward the North, 

 eggs have been deposited in numbers, is not only probable but pretty certain. But in 

 that region such is the case every year, for it is the native home of the swarms which 

 occasionally extend to the upper Mississippi valley. But the number of eggs laid in 

 the States of Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska by the few straggling insects that passed 

 into that country last Fall, will not equal that laid in ordinary seasons by indigenous 

 species. In Colorado, also, there have been in most parts such abundant rains since 

 locu*t eggs were laid, and the ground has been so unusually moist, that there is some 

 hope that the bulk of the eggs are or will be destroyed.* 



I give it as my belief that, first in the three States mentioned, (Missouri, Kansas and 

 Nebraska), there will not hatch as many locusts next Spring as would naturally hatch 

 in ordinary seasons from the indigenous species; second, that, compared with other 

 parts of the country, those States ravaged by locusts last Spring and early Summer 

 will enjoy the greater immunity, during the same seasons of 1876, not only from 

 locust injuries, but from the injuries of most other noxious insects, except the wood- 

 borers, in short, the people of the ravaged section have reason to be hopeful rather 

 than gloomy. They will certainly not suffer in any general way from locust injuries 

 in the early season ; and the only way in which they can suffer from the migrating 

 pest is by fresh swarms later in the year from the far northwest, the odds being, how- 

 ever, from a number of reasons which it is unnecessary to enumerate here, very great 

 against any such contingency. There is one redeeming feature in the JournaVs article. 

 It is the advice to the people of the States named to not be profligate of the abundant 

 corn crop they have garnered, but to store it for an emergency. If nothing short of a 

 false alarm would cause them to do this, the statement might find justification ; but the 

 lesson of 1S75 so clearly pointed to such a course, and was so dearly bought, that it 

 will not needlessly go unheeded. 



•The Colorado Farmer for April 28, 1876, says editorially: "Hearing many conflicting reports 

 about the probable appearance and ravages of the hoppers this season, we took time recently to visit 

 a number of ranches on Clear Creek, Kalsion and Bear creeks, and investigated for ourselves and inter- 

 viewed many, and from all the inquiries we have made of reliable people from all parts of the Territory 

 and a careful gleaning of our exchanges, we have been lead to the following conclusions : 



There will be some locusts, but not in the countless millions of last year. They may do some 

 damage, but not such havoc as in the past. They have already commenced to hatch in warm, sunny 

 localities, and a careful examination of the ground in many places miles apart, and in different sections 

 of the oonntry and their favorite hatching grounds demonstrates that the eggs are in insignitlcant quanti- 

 ties compared with last near, and tliat where farmers have worked to exterminate them by dragging 

 the ground several times during the Fall and early Winter and Spring, millions of eggs liave 

 been destroyed, 



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