The Short-Horned Grasshoppers or True Locusts 



grasshopper or migratory locust (Melanoplus spretus), an insect 

 which damaged western agriculture, especially in the States of 

 Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska and Missouri, in the years 1874-1876, 

 to the extent of more than $200,000,000, and which was the sub- 

 ject of an investigation by a special governmental commission 

 lasting through several years; the common red-legged locust 

 (Melanoplus femur-rubrum), a species closely resembling the 

 foregoing but having shorter wings; the two-striped locust 

 (Melanoplus bivittatus), a widespread form which is abundant 

 almost every year; the Carolina locust (Dissosteira Carolina), the 

 common light-brown species seen so frequently along dusty 

 roads; the American locust (Schistocerca americana), more 

 abundant in our Southern States where it occasionally becomes 



Fig. 222. Dictyophorus reticulatus. (After Glover.) 



very injurious; and the differential locust (Melanoplus differen- 

 iialis), a species which has recently done great damage to cotton 

 plantations in Mississippi. The lubber grasshopper of Florida 

 and Georgia is known as Dictyophorus reticulatus. It varies in 

 color from green to black and has very short wings. It occurs 

 frequently in enormous numbers in the rice-fields near the mouth 

 of the Savannah River, and is an extremely disagreeable object 

 on which to step; in fact, it reminds one of Thackeray's famous 

 remark when he swallowed his first saddle-rock oyster. The 

 corresponding lubber grasshopper of the Southwest is (Brachy- 

 stola magna, and is a large greenish species. 



333 



