176 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
left the country for ever. The number of actual homestead 
settlers is thus reduced fully one-half in my own neighbour- 
hood, aud of that one-half not one family in ten have 
provisions, fuel, or clothing, to last them through the winter; 
fully two-thirds have not food enough to last until the Ist of 
December. I find, from conversation in Kearney with settlers 
both north and south for a distance of thirty to fifty miles, 
that the same statement holds true over almost the entire 
region. Thus, notwithstanding the cry of some of our papers 
that “we are not beggars,” more than two-thirds of those now 
on their homesteads must either beg or starve. In less than 
thirty days. there will be starvation and death, unless these 
needs are promptly met. ‘There is no corn, no oats, no feed 
of any kind for stock, except what is shipped in from a 
distance; there is no fuel except coal, at from 8 to 11 dollars 
per ton; there is no work, no money; there is no seed-corn, 
and, in very many instances, no seeds of any kind for 
another year’s planting. On the 13th inst. I met two of my 
neighbours. One has a family of six to provide for, three of 
them young children: says he,—*“ I have just flour enough to 
last until Saturday night.” The other has a family of ten, 
four of whom are sick, and have been since September; one 
child, a bright boy of some four years, has lost the entire use 
of his limbs, and now has to have the care of a helpless babe: 
this man has flour for ten days, and potatoes that will enable 
him to get along for a week or two longer. Last winter this 
family of children were entirely without shoes or stockings, 
with clothing just sufficient to cover nakedness, and ragged 
at that. The writer of this article has flour for a week,—fifty 
pounds,—and pays for it in breaking one acre of prairie, thus 
giving 3 dollars in work for 1°20 dollar-worth of flour. He 
does not state this complainingly, being glad to get work to 
feed his five babies at any price. I merely give these three 
cases asasample. While I give but three, there are many 
others all around me in fully as deplorable a situation. This 
want extends over the whole area of country,—west, north, 
and south; and the farther the settlement is from the 
supplies, the greater the wants and privations of the 
settlers.’ 
“The Plague of Locusts in Manitoba, §c.; specially with 
reference to Devastations previously to 1874.—Thus far we have 
