﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 83 



southeast, in which it is not indigenous, the changed conditions are 

 such that the first generation hatched out in that (to it) unnatural 

 climate, either forsakes it on the wing or perishes from debility, dis- 

 ease and general deterioration. On the soundness of this conclusion 

 depends the future welfare of most of the more fertile States between 

 the Mississippi and the mountains, and science, as well as past experi- 

 ence, show it to be sound. Upon this hypothesis the people of nearly 

 the whole country so scourged during the past year, and so threatened 

 next Spring, may console themselves that the evil is but temporary: 

 they may have to fight their tiny foe most desperately next Spring, 

 but they have also the assurance that even if he prove master of the 

 field, he will vacate in time to, in all probability, allow of good crops 

 of some of the staples, and that he may not return again for years. 

 On the other hypothesis — for which there is only apparent, and no 

 realreason — ruin stares them inevitably in the face. 



The causes which limit the eastward flight of the winged swarms 

 that come from the Northwest are, with the majority of people, 

 still more difficult to appreciate ; for most persons can see no reason 

 why a swarm that overruns the western portions of Minnesota, Iowa 

 and Missouri, should not extend to the eastern borders of the same 

 States, or into Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and eastward. Having previ- 

 ously considered the more occult climatic influences that bear on the 

 belief that they never will, I need only state here, that the principal 

 arguments rest in the facts that — 1st, the power of flight of any insect 

 that has a limited winged existence, must somewhere find a limit ; 2d, 

 that all past experience has shown that Caloptenus spretus has never 

 extended, in a general way, beyond the limit indicated, and that as 

 long as the present average conditions of wind and climate prevail, it 

 is reasonable to suppose that it never will. 



One of the principal difficulties in the way of a proper apprehen- 

 sion of the facts, is found in the failure, in the popular mind, to dis- 

 criminate between species. The ordinary newspaper writer talks of 

 the grasshopper, or the locust, as though all over the country and all 

 over the world there was but one and the same species. One of the 

 Governors present at the Conference referred to, was at first fully of 

 the belief that our Rocky Mountain pest came all the way from Asia. 

 In the case of this destructive species, even some entomologists have 

 added to the difficulty by erroneously claiming that it is common all 

 over the country to the Atlantic ocean. 



The above thoughts were suggested by the following reports, that 

 met my eye, in the Cincinnati Gazette of the 24:th of October, from 

 Dayton and Hamilton, respectively, in the State of Ohio : 



