LOCUST 



3481 



LOCUST 



growing in patches on adobe soil, and attains a 

 height of one foot. It bears deep purple flow- 

 ers, short black, thick pods and leaflets thickly 

 covered with hairs. The branches tend to lie 

 rather close to the ground, giving the plant a 

 sprawling appearance. Its blossoms appear 

 about June 1 in the latitude of Colorado, but 

 farther south the flowering season begins early 

 in April. 



The white loco is sometimes called the stem-- 

 less loco, because it has no true plant stem. Its 

 blossoms are borne on long flower stems that 

 grow in a more or less upright position. In 

 the regions of the Great Plains the plant bears 

 white flowers, but in the mountains deep shades 

 of violet and purple are common. This loco 

 weed is of wide distribution (see map). 



Consult "The Loco-Weed Disease," in Farmers' 

 Bulletin 380, of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture. 



LOCUST, lo'kust, an insect known since re- 

 mote antiquity for its crop-destroying habits. 

 It belongs to the same family as the grass- 

 hopper in fact, most of the American locusts 

 would in England be considered grasshoppers. 



PRINCIPAL PARTS OF A LOCUST 

 (a) Antennae (e) Ear 



(6) Ocellus (little (/) Thorax 



eye) (g) Femur 



(c) Compound eye (h) Tibia 



(d) Head (i) Abdomen 



The seventeen-year cicada (see CICADA) and 

 other cicadas are often, though incorrectly, 

 called locusts. (See article INSECT, subhead 

 Classification of Insects, division 15.) 



The locust plague in ancient Egypt is de- 

 scribed in Exodus X so vividly that we know 

 it to be the same as the one of modern times. 

 The insects travel in swarms, settling down 

 upon fields and systematically eating every 

 stalk and leaf. One such swarm at the Red Sea 

 was estimated to carpet an area of 2,000 miles. 

 In the Mississippi Valley millions of dollars 

 worth of crops were destroyed between 1870 

 and 1880 by the Rocky Mountain locust, but 

 this region has suffered no serious invasion since 



1876. On a summer morning in that year anx- 

 ious farmers saw, like a thin, silvery cloud be- 

 tween them and the sun, countless millions of 

 these dreaded creatures, whose fluttering, mem- 

 branous wings had the appearance of an ever- 

 shifting haze. Then they descended upon the 

 growing fields of grain, and the season's crop 

 was destroyed in a few hours. It is said that 

 sometimes the locusts have appeared in such 

 dense swarms they have impeded the move- 

 ments of railway trains and obscured the bright- 

 ness of the sun. As the main breeding grounds 

 of the locust in Western United States are now 

 in subjection to the plow, British Columbia is 

 its principal North American home. 



Several measures have been found useful in 

 combating them. The eggs may be destroyed 

 by harrowing and late fall plowing, and the 

 newly-hatched young can be crushed between 

 rollers. Some farmers scatter little pellets of 

 bran and arsenic over the infested fields. The 

 insects will eat this mixture, which is poisonous 

 to them. The locust lays its eggs in the ground, 

 enclosed in a case holding usually about twenty- 

 five. In Cyprus, in the year 1881, over 1,300 

 tons of the little eggs were destroyed, but the 

 next year there appeared to be as many of the 

 insects as ever. Swarms have been known to 

 travel from Saskatchewan to Texas, and others 

 have been seen at sea 1,200 miles from land. 



By drawing their hind legs across their wing 

 covers, or when in flight by rubbing together 

 their front and hind wings, swarms of locusts 

 make a noise which is said to be deafening. In 

 some countries locusts are eaten. Shakespeare, 

 in Othello, speaks of food "luscious as locusts," 

 and Saint Matthew says of John the Baptist 

 that "his meat was locusts and wild honey." 

 They are candied in China, and are an impor- 

 tant article of the Filipino diet. Like the grass- 

 hopper, the locust has long hind legs with which 

 it leaps, but its antennae (which see) are shortef 

 than the grasshopper's. It differs from most 

 insects in not passing through the usual stages 

 of development (metamorphosis), the young 

 nymphs being distinguished from the mature 

 locusts chiefly by their lack of wings. C.H.H. 



LOCUST, the name of a group of orna- 

 mental shade trees, nearly all of them thorny. 

 They bear heavily-scented flowers, which hang 

 in drooping clusters, those of most varieties re- 

 sembling pea blossoms. The light blue-green 

 leaves are compound, consisting of oval leaflets 

 growing in single or double rows on opposite 

 sides of a common long stem. The larger 

 branches grow almost at right angles to the 



