PACKAUD.I LOCUSTS OF CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA. 647 



would make the losses in other parts of the West at least twice as 

 much more, or $45,000,000 iu all. The estimated money-loss occa- 

 sioned by the chinch-bug in Illinois in 18G4 was over $7;>,0()0,000; 

 in Missouri, in 1874, it is estimated by Dr. Riley to have been 

 $19,00;>,000. The annual losses from the chinch-bug are greater, Mr. 

 Kiley says, than from any other insect. The average annual loss to the 

 cotton crop from the attacks of the cotton army-worm alone is estimated 

 at $50,000,000. Adding to these the losses sustained by the attacks of 

 about a tiiousand other species of insects which affect our cereals, forage 

 and tield-croi)s, fruit-trees and shrubs, garden vegetables, shade and 

 ornamental trees, as well as our hard and pine forests and stored fruits, 

 and it will not be thought an exaggeration to j)ut: our annual losses at 

 $1*00,000,01)0. If the people of this country would only look at this 

 annual de|)letion, this absolute waste, which drags her backward in the 

 race Avith the countries of ihe Old World, they might see the necessity 

 of taking efJective preventive measures in restraining the ravages of 

 insects. With care and forethought, based on the observance of facts 

 by scientific men, we believe that from $50,000,000 to $100,000,000, or 

 from one-quarter to one-half of this annual waste, could be saved to the 

 country. And the practical, most efticient way is for the States to co- 

 operate with the General Government in the appointment of salaried 

 entomologists, and of a United States commission of entomologists, who 

 should combine the results of the State otticials, and issue weekly, or, if 

 necessary, daily bulletins, perhaps in combination with the Weather- 

 Signal Bureau, as to the conditions of the insect world, forewarning 

 farmers and gardeners from week to week as to what enemies should 

 be guarded against and what preventive and remedial measures should 

 be used. 



The Weather Signal Bureau, first snggested and urgpd by the late I. 

 A. Lapham, was not instituti^d without ridicule and opposition, bnt it 

 has saved millions to our commerce and agriculture. The maintenance 

 of an entomological commission and the appointment of State entomol- 

 ogists would involve comparatively little expense. Already, owing to 

 the full information regarding the invasion of ^Missouri by the locust iu 

 1874, contained in the reports of Prof. C. V. Kiley, the people of that 

 State will be well prepared, from the direful experience cf the past, to 

 deal more intelligently and efficiently with the locust iu the future. 



THE MIGRATORY LOCUSTS OF CENTRAL AND SOU rH AMERICA. 



We have already referred to the fact that swarms of locusts of unknown 

 species have occurred at different dates in Guatemala and other parts 

 of Central America. The following notices are taken from an article by 

 A. S. Taylor, of Monterey, Cal., published in the Smithsonian lieport 

 for 1858: "Throughout California, with its an^e-1849 boundaries, 

 throughout Lower California, JSTew Mexico, and all the dry and the 

 elevated mesas or plateaus of the republic of Mexico, their ravages have 

 been noted by the old S[)anish chroniclers from the first conquest and 

 settlement of the countries." In 1032 the parishes of Mexico and Pinola, 

 and other parts of the uplands of Guatemala, were overrun with locusts. 

 Clavigero witnessed locust invasions in 1738 or 1739 upon the coasts of 

 Xicayan, in Oaxaca. Afterward a famine occurred in Yucatan. 



Regarding the injuries of a Guatemalan locust, we quote the following 

 account from Squier's Honduras j descriptive, historical, and statistical, 

 1870 : 



The insect, however, which is most dreaded in Honduras, as indeed in all Central 

 America, is the langosta or chapul'm, a species of grasshopper or locust, which at iuter- 



