lg2 NATURAL HISTORY. 



that this small form should do the damage which is credited to it, but the 

 vast numbers make up for the comparative insignificance of the individual. 

 Each locust is provided with a strong pair of hard, horny jaws, and excel- 

 lent digestive powers, which enable it to eat 

 an enormous amount ; and so when a swarm 

 of them fall on a field of wheat or corn, they 

 soon devour every leaf ; and when they leave 

 fig. las. — Western grasshopper ft to seek another, it appears almost as if fire 



(Caloptenus spretus). . ' 



had run over it. These swarms are enormous 

 in size. One can hardly believe it, and yet the statement is true, that 

 railroad trains have been stopped by their numbers, "the insects passing 

 over the track, or basking thereon so numerously that the oil from their 

 crushed bodies reduced the traction so as to actually stop the train, espe- 

 cially on an up-grade." 



The permanent breeding-ground of the locust is mostly confined to the 

 territories of Wyoming and Montana, and the British possessions lying 

 immediately to the north. Here they may be found in considerable num- 

 bers every year, and once in a while, from climatic or other causes not 

 understood, they migrate from these highlands, and descend in immense 

 numbers over all the cultivated land, to the east and southeast, as far as the 

 Mississippi. Here they breed for two or three years, but soon they begin to 

 die out. In some way or other, the conditions of this region are unfa- 

 vorable for their permanent existence there, and nature does what man 

 cannot do. The United States Entomological Commission collected a vast 

 amount of valuable data regarding the locusts, but their actual influence 

 in diminishing the numbers of the pest were very inconsiderable, indeed 

 almost infinitesimal. There is in natural as well as political affairs, 

 a balance of power. When a species attains an enormous numerical 

 development, as the locust does at intervals, it produces as a result a pro- 

 portionate amount of enemies, and these soon check the increase in num- 

 bers and then rapidly reduce them. Of these enemies of the locusts, 

 birds undoubtedly stand most prominent ; but whether they really destroy 

 more than some smaller and less conspicuous forms, is a question. From 

 the moment the egg is laid until the adult condition is reached, the 

 locust lives in constant danger from other insects. The eggs are eaten 

 by numerous flies and beetles, while the adults are killed and devoured 

 by many more. 



The locust, like many of its relatives, with the tip of its abdomen 

 bores deep holes in the soil, and in these deposits its packets of eggs, which 

 pass the winter in this subterranean position. In the spring the young 

 hatch out, — most grotesque-looking creatures, with large heads, no wings, 



