ENTOMOLOGY 215 



Every year great numbers of grasshoppers gather along ditch- 

 banks and roadsides and along little-used roads through the fields. 

 In such places as these the females lay their eggs, thrusting the ab- 

 domen an inch or more deep in the soil and laying a pod or mass 

 of oblong light yellow eggs. Both sexes die with the coming of 

 winter. The eggs in the frozen soil hatch when the ground grows 

 warm in spring. The young hoppers make their way to the sur- 

 face and at once begin feeding on the tender green leaves and grass. 

 As the newly-hatched young are small and weak it is a difficult 

 matter for them to make their way to the surface. If the eggs can 

 be buried a few inches in the soil this becomes impossible. 



For this reason it is customary in parts of Nebraska and Min- 

 nesota to bury the grasshopper eggs by plowing them into the soil. 

 Turned under by the plow the eggs are buried so deeply that when 

 they hatch the young hoppers cannot make their way to the sur- 

 face. This is a practical and successful way of destroying grass- 

 hoppers when it can be applied. 



Ditch-banks, roads through the fields, and waste places near 

 the fields, should be examined for eggs late in the autumn. An 

 inch of surface soil in such places should be sliced off with a shovel 

 here and there. If the ground is full of eggs, it should be plowed 

 before winter. The rain and snow will then cake the surface soil 

 and pack it so hard that the newly-hatched grasshoppers can scarcely 

 make their way through. Spring plowing is not so effective because 

 the soil docs not have time to settle and pack before the grasshopper 

 eggs begin to hatch. 



As vast numbers of these insects hatch out in the fields them- 

 selves where plowing is out of the question, harrowing or disking 

 must be resorted to in such situations. Harrowing breaks up the 

 clusters of eggs, buries many of them, crushes some, and scatters 

 the rest through the soil. It is not so effective as plowing because 

 it does not bury the eggs deeply enough to destroy them all. It 

 can be done either in autumn or in the spring. 



These methods of destroying the eggs are our most effective 

 means of holding grasshoppers in check. Other methods which 

 are useful in midsummer are discussed in the latter part of this 

 pamphlet, among them poisoning, and the use of hopper-dozers 

 which destroy half-grown grasshoppers by means of kerosene and 

 crude petroleum. Plowing and narrowing are the best methods 

 known. The work should be done early in the winter before the 

 ground is frozen or else as early in spring as is possible. 



Grasshoppers in alfalfa fields may be held in check in ordi- 

 nary years by plowing late in the fall the waste lands where they 

 breed and by disc-harrowing badly infested fields, thus destroying 

 the eggs in the soil. Sometimes, however, the ground is so full of 

 eggs that plowing and harrowing do not destroy enough to prevent 

 great numbers from hatching. In such cases two remedies remain, 

 to be applied just after the first crop has been cut. These arc pois- 

 oning and the use of hopper-dozers. The Department of Agricul- 



