LOCUSTS OF BENGAL, MADRAS, ASSAM, & BOMBAY. 193 
having started, in the early part of the year, from the Wynaad and Nilgiri 
Hills, in the scuth-west, and thence to have werked their way, with the 
prevailing wind, over the Presidency to the north and east, occasionally stop- 
ping to feed or to deposit their eggs in the ground ; for it is otherwise difficult 
to account for the fact of their appearing so much earlier in the south-west 
than in the north-east. Little is known of the life-history of the insects, but 
it may be noticed that locusts were observed pairing in the Salem District in 
the latter part of June, and also that the young locusts, which were found in 
the early part of May in the Udamalpet taluq, were supposed to be the off- 
spring of the large flights of winged locusts which had appeared in the pre- 
_ ceding February in the same talug. The connection between the autumn 
broods of young locusts and those which appeared in the early part of the 
year has not been made out satisfactorily. 
Of the measures adopted against these locusts, the most successful seem to 
have been :—the destruction of the swarms of young wingless locusts by 
driving them into lines of burning straw ; the preventing of the flights of winged 
locusts from settling in the fields by lighting fires, beating drums, and waving 
branches and cloths in the air, as soon as a flight appeared ; and the driving 
ef the winged locusts out of the fields, when they had already alighted, by 
beating through the crops. itis said thatin cases where winged flights were 
driven persistently through a number of villages, without being allowed to 
settle, the locusts perished without doing injury. The above account of the 
Madras locust invasion of 1878 is chiefly taken from the official reports pre- 
served in the Proceedings of the Revenue and Agricultural Department of the 
Government of India. With regard to the identity of the insects concerned 
in the Madras locust invasion of 1878, nothing seems to have been ascertained 
at the time of the invasion, though the insects were spoken of in one of the 
reports as belonging to the species Locusta migratoria. This, however, may 
pessibly have been due to the fact that the locust of Central Europe is often 
referred to in old entomology books under this antiquated name; much 
importance, therefore, cannot be attached to the indentification, and the only 
clue which we possess lies in the specimens preserved in the collections of the 
Central Museum, Madras, From this museum a set of specimens, which are 
supposed to represent the Madras locust of 1878, have been kindly furnished 
by Mr. Edgar Thurston, They have been identified by Dr. Henri de Saussure 
and prove to comprise no less than six very distinct species, which are as 
follows: (1) Acridiwm wruginosum, Burm., represented by five or six 
specimens which vary a good deal in the arrangement of the wing markings, 
(2) Acridium melanocorne, Serv., var., (3) Tryxalis turrita, Linn., (4) Meco- 
poda sp., (5) Euprepocnemis sp., represented in each case by one or at most 
two specimens, (6) a specimen, ina very poor state of preservation, which 
belongs either to the species Puchytylus mégratorius or to Pachytylus 
cinerascens. 
