152 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
practice of giving the name of locust to a totally different 
insect, belonging to an entirely different order.” 
The care which Mr. Bethune has taken to establish the 
correct nomenclature, like the rules of the British Association 
for the Advancement of Science, instituted with a similar 
object, tends to increase rather than remove the difficulty in 
question. ‘lhe terms grasshopper and locust have reference 
simply to magnitude; the smaller species being called grass- 
hoppers, and the larger ones locusts. Until this is admitted 
there will be no solution of this difficult subject. However, 
there is no doubt that the locust of North America is the 
Calopterus spretus, a species of the class Orthoptera, and the 
family Acridide. In giving this creature the credit, or rather 
discredit, of all the mischief done in the United States, it is 
necessary to point out the existence of other and larger 
locusts in the United States, some of which attain an expanse 
of wing of nine or ten inches. The account given by Bethune 
of the ravages of Calopterus spretus is as follows, omitting 
the account prior to 1874:— 
“ The Plague of Locusts in 1874.—Let us now turn to the 
terrible visitation of the present year, from the effects of 
which so many thousands are now suffering the privations of 
famine throughout immense tracts of country. Last year 
(1873) the locusts or grasshoppers were stated to have 
inflicted considerable damage upon crops of various kinds in 
some of the Western States, principally Nebraska and 
Kansas; here and there also in Minnesota, Iowa, and Dakota, 
there were comparatively trifling visitations. But in the 
month of July of this year there began one of the most serious 
invasions that has ever occurred in the West. In point of 
numbers, and in extent of area affected, the plague was 
probably no greater than on some previous occasions, notably 
that of 1855 that we have referred to; the great difference, 
however, is caused by the fact that twenty years ago the 
country west of the Mississippi River was an almost 
uninhabited wilderness of prairie, while now it is traversed 
by a net-work of railways, covered with populous towns and 
villages, and occupied to a very large extent by multitudes of 
industrious people. ‘Twenty years ago the locusts affected 
the food-supply, perhaps, of the buffalo, the Indian, and the 
scattered frontier settlers, but now their ravages cause desti- 
