206 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
passes through the ravaged country during the subsequent 
winter. Sour cherry, apricot, and plum-trees, are less 
affected by them, while ripe fruit is seldom touched. Of 
berries, strawberries and blackberries are devoured, where 
raspberries are frequently unmolested. Flowering shrubs 
very generally suffer; and they are particularly fond of rose 
and lilac. Of herbaceous plants, Helianthus, Amaranthus, 
and Xanthium, are eaten with especial avidity. Grape-vines 
suffer more from the girdling of the fruit-stems than from 
defoliation. Forest and shade-trees suffer in different degrees, 
and some, when young, are not unfrequently killed outright. 
Last year, honey locust, red cedar, box elder, Osage orange, 
elm and oak, were either untouched or but little injured, 
while the following trees were preferred in the order of their 
naming: ash, willow, cottonwood, balm of Gilead, silver- 
leaved and Lombardy poplars, black ash, black locust, black 
walnut, hickory, Ailanthus, maple, Sumach, and evergreens. 
In every case they show a marked preference for plants that 
are unhealthy or withered.’” 
English philanthropists, who have taken such laudable 
pains to discover outlets for their charity in Africa, would do 
well to direct their attention to the naturally fruitful, but now 
desolate, regions westward of the Mississippi: the plethora 
of English wealth might here find a safety-valve among a 
people who are really and positively our own kith and 
kindred.. Attracted by reports, to what was represented a 
western paradise, thousands of families have migrated from 
their homes in England to find a desolate, inhospitable 
waste, rendered so by the ravages of these insatiable 
destroyers. It may be asked whether the Americans them- 
selves are doing their best to meet the emergency. And the 
answer is certainly in the affirmative. Men of science have 
exerted themselves to the utmost in diffusing a knowledge of 
the natural history of the insect, and in endeavouring to find 
means of exterminating or, at any rate, checking the increase 
of the enemy; while the benevolent have sought, by every 
means in their power, to repair the losses, and thus mitigate 
the sufferings. 
A crumb of comfort remains to the afflicted; although 
some differences of opinion prevail on the subject, a general 
opinion prevails that the locust has reached its eastern limit 
