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THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 203 
garden productions, cause great famines and sickness among 
the inhabitants and neophytes of the establishments. At one 
time immense multitudes of these voracious insects died, 
infecting the air dreadfully with the stench of their corruption 
and decay.” 
Subsequent invasions bear date 1838, 1846, and 1855. In 
the latter year they extended themselves over a larger surface 
than had ever before been noticed. They covered the terri- 
tories of Washington and Oregon, and “ every valley of the 
state of California, ranging from the Pacific Ocean to the 
eastern base of the Sierra Nevada; covering the entire terri- 
tories of Utah and New Mexico; the immense grassy prairies 
lying on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains; the dry 
mountain-valleys of the republic of Mexico, and the countries 
of Lower California and Central America; and also those 
portions of Texas which resemble, in physical characteristics, 
Utah and California.” The records prove that the locusts 
extended themselves in one year “ over a surface comprised 
within thirty-eight degrees of latitude, and, in the broadest 
part, eighteen degrees of longitude.” The details of this 
insect-invasion was frightful in the extreme: before them 
was a productive paradise,—“ orchards, gardens, vineyards, 
fields of young grain, crops of vegetables,—converted in a 
single day into a withered, blackened desert.” That summer 
was the hottest that had been known for ten years. During 
the two following years the invasion was confined to the east 
of the Rocky Mountains: in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kansas, 
the locusts were especially destructive. The following passage 
is cited by Mr. Bethune from the ‘ Practical Entomologist,’ 
vol. il. p. 3:— 
“<*The last day of August, near the middle of the afternoon, 
quite a number of grasshoppers were seen alighting, and that 
number rapidly increased till a litle before sunset. The next 
morning they appeared much thicker, but were only so from 
having crawled more into the open air to sun themselves. 
About nine o'clock they began to come thicker and faster 
from a northerly direction, swarming in the air by myriads, 
and making a roar like suppressed distant thunder. By 
looking up to the sun they could be seen as high as the eye 
could discover an object so small, in appearance like a heavy 
snow-storm; each grasshopper very much like a very large 
