TWENTY- FIFTH REPOKT OF STATE ENTOMOLOGIST 17 



District 5. No district leader 



County County Leader 



Beaverhead Bernard Williams^ 



Flathead R- G. Newell 



Granite 



Lake J. C. Paisley 



Missoula M. iL Oliphant 



Powell A. W. Johnson- 

 Sanders H. R. Armeling 



"Smith-Hughes Instructor, local High School. 



The law passed by congress earryinp; the urasshopper appropria- 

 tion stated specifically that bait was to be furnished only to sueli 

 counties and such communities as were properly organized to carry 

 on the work in the most efficient manner. The type of organization 

 recommended was exactly that which had been in use in grasshopper 

 campaigns in Montana as early as 1917 and rather extensively used 

 in the large grasshopper outbreaks in this state from 1920 to 1923. 

 The method is described in detail in a Montana Agricultural Exper- 

 iment Station leaflet entitled "How to Kill Grasshoppers," pub- 

 lished in 1923.* 



Briefly, each county was divided into communities by the county 

 leader. In each community a leader was appointed although in some 

 cases a committee of three farmers acted for the community. Every 

 district had from one to several mixing stations where the required 

 amount of water was added to the bait. The community leaders and 

 the foremen of the mixing stations had specific duties to perform. 

 Further organization came about through four or five farmers who 

 lived near each other, combining their efforts in the important work 

 of spreading the bait. (See later section on tlie use .of mechanical 

 bait spreaders.) Large scattering crews, in some cases financed 

 through relief money, were organized to treat important stretches of 

 unoccupied land. 



Grasshopper control by means of poisoned bait was nothing new 

 to thousands of Montana farmers. Many community chairmen and 

 foremen of mixing stations had acted in the same capacity during the 

 grasshopper outbreaks of the early '20s. In spite of this general fa- 

 miliarity with the methods to 1)e employed, 18.171 farmers attended 

 the organization meetings and many hundreds more the various 

 demonstrations held a little later in the season. 



*Probably nothing new in the way of organization. A very similar method 

 was used in China for the collection of destructive locusts in the fifth century 

 A. D. 



