156 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
Years of patient waiting, hard work, and self-sacrifice, have 
been destroyed in a few days, with no known remedy for 
protection; just as the fruits of labour were beginning to be 
realized, destruction came; and the question with many is: 
“Is it of any use to try again?” Here is a field for the 
Department of Agriculture. Some method of protection or 
relief must be had against the destruction of this insect, or an 
immense tract of magnificent country will never be what it 
would without this curse. I am one of those who believe all 
such things may be controlled by some practical method; it 
only requires study, enterprise, and means to learn how. 
This county (Doniphan) could well afford to pay 100,000 
dollars for a guarantee that no grasshoppers should ever 
trouble it again. I have learned that vegetation highly 
cultivated and growing vigorously is less liable to be destroyed 
than when on the decline or growing feebly. Thus it is we 
often see a single tree in an orchard eaten even to the bark, 
while others of the same variety are not damaged so much; 
and upon examination it will be invariably found that those 
mostly eaten were diseased, or had their vitality in some way 
impaired. This thing was noticeable when the same kind of 
insects were here six or seven years ago. Of all fruit trees, 
apple and pear trees suffer the most, while peaches, plums 
and cherries suffer the least. They eat the leaves off the 
apples, and leave most of the apples on, but of the peaches 
they will eat the fruit and leave the foliage; but in many 
instances, when vegetation is not plenty, | understand they 
clean all as they go; and I have seen instances of this kind. 
The damage to vineyards in this county is not so great. 
They do not seem to relish grapes, and are satisfied by eating 
off the stems and letting the bunches fall to the ground. 
There will not be enough corn in this county to feed what 
stock there is in the county as it should be fed.’ The same 
report states that ‘the plague’—as it justly terms it—is 
reported in two counties in Wisconsin, seven in Minnesota, 
five in Iowa, four in Missouri, thirty iu Kansas, and seven in 
Nebraska. It adds that ‘the wide-spread destruction which 
they (the locusts) have caused in the north-west has not been 
adequately described. In many places large masses of people 
will probably suffer during the coming winter for the neces- 
saries of life, their crops having been swept by this remorseless 
. 
i 
