TWENTY-FIFTH REPORT OF STATE ENTOMOLOGIST 21 



tions were veiy faulty. It must I)e reinemhered, liovvcver, that about 

 the first week in July the inevitable loss of practically all dry-land 

 crops in the eastern half of tlie state was finally realized. No mir- 

 acle in rainfall could have made much difference after th;tt time. 

 But as late as Friday, July 6, we liad every reason to t)eli('Vf iliat 

 we were going to be several hundred tons short in spite of the ad- 

 ditional allotments of bait from the federal government and 340 

 tons furnished by the Montana Relief Commission. Up to that very 

 day thousands of farmers were using bait to protect what crops thej- 

 had from grasshopper invasion and were putting out poison even 

 wdiere no crop remained, in order to remove that hazard for the 

 coming season. As long as this was going on district and county 

 leaders did not wish to release any bait to other sections where crops 

 w^ere good. Only a few days prior to this time, farmers in Fergus 

 County had themselves purchased additional bait and the county 

 commissioners had furnished sixty tons to meet the apparent short- 

 age. 



Then suddenly it all changed. The spreading of bait in eastern 

 Montana stopped dead. By Tuesday, July 10, we knew the campaign 

 was over there and instead of a bait shortage we had a large surplus. 

 From that time on the demand for bait came mostly from irrigated 

 sections and for the protection of fall wheat, for which latter purpose 

 several hundred tons was used. 



USE OF MECHANICAL BAIT SPREADERS 



There are two conditions which must be met if the best results 

 are to be obtained with poisoned bran mash. The first is that the 

 bait must be thinly and evenl}' scattered over the areas where the 

 grasshoppers are. and the second is that the bait must be applied 

 during that part of the day when the grasshoppers are feeding. 

 Under the best conditions one man can spread satisfactorily only 

 about 200 to 300 pounds of bait during the most favorable period in 

 the morning. Of course he can get rid of much more but we are 

 not speaking of wasted ])ait. In previous campaigns it was well 

 known that farmers, faced with covering a large acreage, would con- 

 tinue to spread bait throughout the entire day which resulted in a 

 great waste of materi;d and dissatisfaction over the results obtained. 

 In other cases when they realized that they could not possibly cover 

 the infested areas they became discouraged and stopped poisoning. 

 Montana farms are larger and operated with much lower man-power 



