45 



Remedies. — As a rule neither this insect nor the salt-marsh cater- 

 pillar occurs in troublesome numbers; hence remedies are not often 

 necessar3\ It can be controlled by ordinary methods of spraying and 

 hand picking. 



GRASSHOPPERS, CRICKETS, AND RELATED INSECTS. 



Of great economic importance in the West, and in some seasons in 

 other regions, are numerous species of locusts, popularly termed 

 grasshoppers. Several forms of related insects, such as katydids and 

 crickets, are also injurious, but all of these insects are general feeders, 

 and as a rule destructive to sugar beets and other vegetable crops only 

 in seasons which have been particularly favorable to their multiplica- 

 tion, and their operations are mainly confined to fields adjacent to 

 grass lands. The numbers of these insects mount into the hundreds, 

 but the really important species might be reduced to between twenty 

 and thirty. Fourteen are listed as sugar-beet pests. 



For present purposes it will be necessar}^ to mention specifically 

 onl}^ a few of the most abundant of the grasshoppers. Like most 

 other forms of the order Orthoptera, they are mostly large insects, 

 with mouth parts formed for biting, and with incomplete metamor- 

 phoses, the young more or less closely resembling the adults, save for 

 the lack of wings. Their name is sufficient indication of their habits: 

 They live normally on grasses for the most part, and their thighs are 

 large, fitting them for long leaps. Everyone knows them so well that 

 further description is unnecessary. Some species are capable of 

 extended flight for hundreds of miles, with occasional intermissions 

 daily for food. In their migrations they go in swarms, and sometimes 

 darken the face of the sun, or at night of the moon. 



Grasshoppers may be classified, as regards their habits, as nonmi- 

 gratory and migratory. The former breed and pass their entire lives 

 in or near the place where the eggs were laid. The migratory species 

 breed in enormous numbers, and when they become too abundant for 

 the limited food supply of a region, they develop the migrating habit 

 and travel in swarms. These insects are particularly abundant and 

 troublesome in arid and semidesert regions, and as their numbers are 

 subject to great variation according to climatic and other conditions, 

 the visitation of a locust swarm may be expected at any time during 

 the warmer months of the year. In dry regions locusts are the most 

 dreaded of insect pests. Because of their voracity and the rapidity of 

 their attack, they lay waste entire townships, counties, and even large 

 portions of States. 



