﻿NINTH ANNUAL REPORT 



The grasshoppers destroyed every field of wheat with which they came in contact, 

 beyond recovery. On account of the'lateness of the season lariuers are lettine: tiieir 

 wheat lauds lay over for corn, in the Spring. M. L. MODRSl. 



Little Osage, Mo., Jan. 8, 1877. 



Indian Territory. — They were thick over most of the Territory, passing south- 

 ward, from the middle of September, and ma)iy of them remaining through the season. 

 They rendered horse-back travel extremely unpleasant. 



Texas— The swarms reached Texas from the North and West about the middle of 

 September, and from that time forth till Winter were flying very generally, over the 

 State, reaching eventually latitude 29°, or more definitely to the Gulf all the way from 

 the Sabine river to Austin. Their course was almost due South, and their injury con- 

 fined to succulent vegetables, shiubs and fruit trees, the Orange and Cotton suffering 

 more particul;irly, 



Mrs. H. S. King, of Austin, writes: 



The cars for about ten days were so much obstructed on the Texas Central line as 

 to necessitate their stopping occassionally to clear the track of the grasshoppers. 

 Though there were millions, they were never sufficiently numerous to obscure the 

 sun, even for an instant, and they have been, as they usually are at this season, com- 

 paratively harmless to vegetation. For about six weeks- they would fly up in the 

 promonaders' face like a pelting rain, alighting on the head and clothes, or taking 

 short flights in advance of him. 



They were especially thick on walls, fencetops, and tree trunks, remaining there 

 torpid until the sun shone out, and during the heat of the day swarming high in air, 

 when they look like snow-flakes, waited by changing breezes. 



Messrs. Nelson and Sadler, of G-alveston, state that the insects occurred all along 

 the line of the Texas Central Eailroad. It was most noticeable, as Mr. Juo. M. 

 Crockey-, of Dallas, assures me, that notwithstanding the wind was, on the 19th Sep- 

 tember, and for a few days thereafter, when the heaviest flights occurred, from N., N. 

 E.; it yet varied much during the invasion, blowing mainly from the S. E. Neverthe- 

 less the insects made steady progress southward, succeeding best on calm days and not 

 diverging E. five miles in fifty. Contrary winds simply baffled them and brought them 

 to the ground until the conditions permitted them to continue their course. 



Eggs were laid throughout the territory overrun, and the young hatched in large 

 quantities during the mild weather of February. Up to the time this writing goes into 

 the printer's hands, (March 5, 1877), the young, which have numerously hatched near 

 the Gulf, have been destroyed by heavy cold rains that occurred the latter part ot 

 February. 



Arkansas — The insects overran the extreme N. W. corner of this State, as indicated 

 in my map, and were particularly bad in Benton county. Indeed the injury was 

 mostly confined to this county and the region south of it, the insects not extending 

 east to Carroll county. This is the first recorded instance of their reaching into 

 Arkansas. They made their advent from the 7th to the 15th of October, coming with 

 the wind from the N. W. and flying S. and S. E., until they struck the base of Boston 

 Mountain. As in our own S. W. counties, wheat was greatly injured by tiiem, and 

 eggs were laid up to the time Winter set in. 



From the foregoing record, summed up from numerous reports 

 and observations, it is manifest that the locusts that hatched and did 

 more or less damage in Minnesota early in the year, endeavored to 

 get away to the northwest as soon as the> got wings. They were sub- 

 sequently repulsed and borne back again by the winds to their hatch- 

 ing places ; thence south and southwest into Iowa and Nebraska. As. 



