﻿122 NINTH ANNUAL KEPORT 



causes, and such as have prematurely hatched, those yet to hatch 

 will give birth to locusts enough, under ordinary conditions of 

 weather, to lay waste the earth and render it as bare of vegetation as 

 it is in midwinter, before they take their departure. This is not over- 

 stating the case, and the farmers of the threatened region should 

 count on such a probability and do all in their power to avoid it. 



The insects have already hatched out largely toward the Gulf, 

 and the bulk of them will hatch in lat. 35° about the middle of the 

 month. They will continue to hatch most numerously about four 

 days later with each degree of latitude north, until along the 49th 

 parallel the same scenes will be repeated that occurred in Southern 

 Texas sev^n or eight weeks before. In the S. W. counties of Missouri 

 hatching will -be at its height about the second week in April ; in the 

 N. W. counties a few days later. Wherever they hatch in quantities, 

 the injury will at first be confined to particular fields and locations; 

 but as they increase in size they will become more and more injurious 

 and widen the area of their devastations until, if nothing be done to 

 prevent it, they will ruin most crops by the time the bulk of them 

 acquire wings — leaving, in extreme cases, no plant untouched but the 

 little Amarantus Blitum. This will occur in from six to eight weeks 

 after hatching, and the winged swarms in South Texas will be leaving 

 that country early in May or about the time the young are beginning 

 to hatch near the British American line. 



The unfledged locusts will travel in no especial direction, but in 

 difi"erent directions, and they will not extend, on an average, more 

 than ten miles east of any point where they hatched out. The winged 

 insects, on the contrary, will take their departure in a northerly or 

 northwesterly direction — at least, this will be the prevailing direction 

 of those which rise during the months of May and June. The course 

 of those which rise later may not be so constant. Those that escape 

 from the many vicissitudes that will befall them in the Mississippi 

 Valley, and which are free from disease or parasites when they start, 

 will, in all probability, eventually reach the extreme Northwest, and 

 be largely lost to view beyond our northern boundary. They will not 

 fly eastward so as to do any serious damage beyond the line indicated 

 in the map. 



Such are the probabilities for the Spring and Summer. They are 

 not particularly encouraging! 



I will now state a few of the modifying circumstances and of the 

 possibilities that will lighten the darkness of the picture and may 

 very materially diminish the prospective damage. 



Firstly — The farmers are in much better condition to withstand 

 the temporary loss than they were in the Spring of 1S74. 



