PACKARD.l THE LOCUST IN MINNESOTA IN 1876. 619 



tatoes and garden stuff. Tbey have been depositing their eggs for the 

 last two months. Broicn: Reduced corn, wheat, and rye to 25; oats, 

 barley, and buckwheat to 10. Blue Earth: Injured the corn soraewbat 

 and ruined beans. The county«is literally filled with their eggs. Some 

 of the eggs are being eaten by a small worm or maggot and some by a 

 small red bug. NohJcs: A small amount of corn and wheat escaped the 

 grasshoppers; other crops are almost a total loss. Stevens: Have cut 

 down our crops fearfully within the past month. Todd: Are all over the 

 county; there is scarcely a foot of prairie or timber laud on which eggs 

 cannot be found. Stearns: Overrun the county and deposited millions 

 of eggs. Foclc: Everything was favorable for excessive crops when the 

 grasshoppers came. They reduced wheat 30 per cent. ; corn and oats 

 67; potatoes 75, and ruined beans. — (Monthly Agricultural Eeport, 

 August and September, 187G.) 



Further particulars regarding the locust invasions of Minnesota I 

 extract and condense from a valuable " Eeport on the Rocky Mountain 

 locust for 187G," by Allen Whitman : 



Contrary to what -was stated by Mr. A. S. Taylor, there was no locust invasion of 

 Minnesota in 1855, Int " late in July, 1856, invadmg swarms came from tho northwest 

 into the Upper Mississ ppi Valley, an .i gradually spread along the river daring theseason, 

 mncb the same as they have done in the past summer [1876], and reaching nearly 

 the same limits." * » » Again, in 1864, swarms appeared early in July, along the 

 Upper Minnesota River, and spread eastward gradually during the season, and reached 

 about as far east as in 1874, i. e., to the third tier of towns in Le Sueur County. Scat- 

 tering swarms also visited Manitoba in the same year, and probably some portions of 

 these reached Northwest Minnesota, for we hear of slight appearances of them in tho 

 Eed River and the Sauk Valleys in 1864 and 1865. But the greater portion of the in- 

 jury was done in the Minnesota Valley, and was followed by a general departure to 

 the sonthwest in 1865. ♦ » <• * Itseemsvery likely that the swarms which entered 

 Minnesota in 1864 were hatched at no great distance, and were the offspring of swarms 

 that had alighted in Eastern Dakota in the preceding year. This may, perhaps, be in- 

 ferred from the following letter of the Rev. S. R. Riggs, missionary at the Sisseton 

 In.ian agency, dated September 9, 1875: 



" In 1863, it will be remembered that on General Sibley's expedition to the Missouri 

 we met with the ravages of the grasshoppers in various parts of Dakota, partciularly, 

 as I remember, near Skunk Lake (in Minnehaha County), where the large grass had 

 been eaten to the bare stalks, and our animals fared badly. In 1865 I visited a camp 

 of Dakota scouts, near the ' Hole in the Mountain,' at the head of the Redwood. That 

 was in the mouth of August. The valley of the Minnesota, clear out to the coteau, 

 was so full of grasshoppers as to make it unpleasant traveling. For the nest fonr 

 years, I traveled every summer on the Missouri River, coming over to and from Min- 

 nesota. Every season I met with grasshoppers at some point on the east side of the 

 Missouri. In 1867, and also in 1868, we found them near Fort Randall. In 1869, in 

 August, we met them above Fort Sully, near Grand River. In all the cases they were 

 only in small battalions, and appeared to have come there from other parts. 



" Again, in 1871, slight and scattering swarms of locusts appeared in Stearns, Todd, 

 Douglas, Pope, Otter Tail, Becker, and Folk Counties, and perhaps in others. » * » 

 The invasion of 1873 was something unusual in its character from the earliness of its ar- 

 rival, the direction from which it came, and from the fact that it was the beginning of a 

 visitation which has been prolonged to the present time by what, judging from former 

 years, would appear to be unusual circumstances. Each summer since 1873, instead 

 of being tho scene of a general departure of the hatching-swarms, as in former years, 

 has seen portions of those swarms alighting but a few miles from where they were 

 hatched (generally in the next range of counties, and sometimes in other parts of the 

 same county), and depositing eggs for another brood. In addition to these, new 

 swarms coming in from the northwest in 1874 and again in 1876 have added greatly to 

 the area of devastations in both these years, and in the latter year to the area of egg- 

 deposit." 



The map appended to Mr. Whitman's report clearly shows the suc- 

 cessive encroachments of the locusts in the State. The parents of those 

 that have bred within the State since 1873 " reached the southwestern 

 corner of the State about the 1st of June, 1873, brought by a wind that 

 had been blowing freshly from the southwest for several days." Tho 



