154 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
when desolation and devastation stared us in the face...... 
The wheat, which was at first thought to be out of harm’s 
way, was cut off about one-fourth by the destroying angels; 
a statement in our country paper says the average will be 
about eight or nine bushels per acre. After the grasshoppers 
stopped their depredations there were several damp, cloudy 
days that brought out new tassels and silks on the corn, but 
more than a week of hot, dry weather, with scorching winds, 
checked its growth; so there will be none, excepting a very few 
fields that partially escaped. Turnips have been grown since 
the rain; and it is to be hoped there will yet be some 
potatoes; sweet potatoes were not hurt so badly as the 
common potato. Broom corn, cane, and Hungarian grass, 
were unscathed.’ A writer from St. Paul, Minnesota, to the 
paper above mentioned, says that the locusts ‘ have undoubt- 
edly destroyed five hundred thousand bushels of wheat, and 
are likely to destroy another half million of bushels.’ Later 
on in the season the St. Paul ‘ Press’ publishes the following 
statement in reference to the plague of locusts in Minnesota:— 
‘It is safe to estimate the tilled area in the ravaged district at 
two hundred and seventy-five thousand acres, and of the area 
in wheat in that district at two hundred thousand acres: of 
this area probably not less than one hundred and fifty 
thousand acres have been destroyed. This represents not 
less than two millions five hundred thousand bushels of 
wheat devoured in the germ by the grasshoppers, or about 
one-twelfth of the wheat crop of the state. Add to this area 
fifty thousand acres of oats, at thirty-three bushels per acre, 
or one million three hundred and twenty thousand bushels in 
all, or one-twelfth of the oat crop of the state; twenty 
thousand acres of corn, at thirty-two bushels per acre, three 
hundred and forty thousand bushels, or one-twelfth of the 
corn crop of the state; and perhaps twenty thousand acres 
more in rye, buckwheat, barley, potatoes, and other crops; 
and the full extent of the grasshopper havoc cannot be easily 
estimated.’ Our readers may further judge of the extent of 
the calamity and sufferings consequent upon it from the 
following pastoral letter, issued by the Bishop of Minnesota, 
and appointed to be read in all the churches in his diocese: 
—‘ To the clergy and congregations of the diocese of Minne- 
sota. You are aware that several counties of the State have 
ee 
