﻿66 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT 



nearly all took wing. But great clouds came fresh from the north and the face of the 

 earth was alive with them. A northeast wind, September 1st, carried the greater part of 

 them with it to some place distant from here. Enough remain to do some damage to 

 vegetation and the south winds bring them back, not in great dark clouds as from the 

 noith, but some every day. They seem to float about witli the shifting winds, perhaps 

 for food, but when the wind gets north they go in swarms. That shows their tendency 

 to migrate southward. Those that remain are laying eggs.— [H. E. Van Demen, Ster- 

 ling, Kansas, Sept. 6, 1877. 



* * * Such a host of insects I never saw. The ground is com- 



pletely covered and the branches of the trees are bending down with their weight. In 

 my orchard of nearly twenty acres the trees are covered by myriads. Two hundred 

 Siberian crab-apple trees, next to the house, are completely defoliated, and the grove 

 on the north is one huge moving mass. 



Our corn crop is splendid, and I think is so far advanced that it will not be mate- 

 rially injured. Thirty acres of wheat which looked beautiful and green in the morn- 

 ing is eaten up. Six hundred and forty acres, two miles south of me, that was looking 

 fine at the beginning of the week, looks this morning as it fire had passed over it. A 

 large acreage has been sown in this county earlier than usual. I suppose it is all gone. 

 — [Jno. VV. Robsou, Cheever, Dickinson county, Sept. 8, 1876. 



Mr. H. A. Brous, a former pupil of mine, who spent the whole Summer in Western 

 Kansas, in company with Prof. B. F. Mudge, kept a careful record of the movements 

 of the locusts, and has sent me the same. From this record it is interesting to note 

 that the western part of the State was just as free in Spring and early Summer of the 

 Caloptenus spretus as was the eastern, and that none but the genuine femur-ruhrum and 

 different species of ffidipoda, and of other genera, were noticed. The first specimens 

 of spretus were seen in Wallace county August 5th, flying south from 10 a. m. to 4 p.m. 

 From that time forth they were noticed almost daily flying in different directions, but 

 thickest when from the W. and N. They were most numerous on the 12th and 13th» 

 and on the 24th they were again very thick in Gove county— in both instances flying 

 S. S. VV. and S. W. During September the direction also varied, but was most often 

 to S. W. The highest and heaviest swarms were, however, to the S. On a number of 

 days two distinct strata or currents were observed. Thus, on September 1, there was 

 an upper current going W. and a lower one going S. W. ; on September 2, an 

 upper S. W., a lower N. W.; on September 9. an upper S. W., a lower S. E. E. In Octo- 

 ber there were few noticed. 



The damage done, though serious enough, was less noticeable than in 1874. Vege- 

 tables and Fall wheat suffered most ; one extensive wheat-grower (Mr. T. C. Henrj% of 

 Abilene,) losing 2,500 acres. A great many farmers sowed again, and plowed the soil 

 under, believing that where not sown early enough to come up in the Fall, it is best 

 that it should not come up till Spring, and that an average crop under such conditions 

 can be grown. 



They reached east, according to the records I have at hand, to a line drawn a few 

 miles west of Lawrence, including the larger part of Brown, Doniphan and Atchison 

 ia the N. E. corner; portions of Jefferson, Douglas, Franklin, Anderson, AJlen and 

 Neosho, and most of Labette, Cherokee and Crawford counties in the S. E. Bourbon, 

 Linn and Miami were only partly overrun; Johnson and Wyandotte escaped entirely, 

 and most of Leavenworth was untouched. In nearly all of the more thickly-settled 

 country invaded, eggs were abundantly laid ; and the insects remained laying until 

 buried by the first snows. In the western third of the State, where the insects came 

 earlier, few or no eggs were laid. It will be noticed that the very counties which suf- 

 fered most in 1875 have here escaped, as is the case in Missouri, and as is the case in 

 Minnesota with the counties ravaged in the Spring of 187G. 



Missouri— The counties ravaged by the young insects in 1875, had splendid crops 

 in 187G, and the scarcity which I had anticipated (Rep. S, pp. 120, 156,) of most 



