126 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. VIII. 
different places. Near the Khasia and Mikir Hills they seemed to come from the 
south, i.¢., from the submontane jungle, In the Chapari Mahals, between the Kalang 
and Brahmaputra, the direction of their course was eastwards. They seem to have 
moved with great recularity from west to east along this tract, a distance of some 50 
miles. The ryots, moved perhaps by rumours of the Afghan War, which had penetrat- 
ed thus far, told one another that they came from Cabul. Their numbers were such 
that the reeds and grass of the jungle were bowed.down by their weight when they 
alighted, and they made a clean sweep of all the fields in their way. The Mikirs and 
Lalungs eat locusts after parching them in the fire. Locusts can commonly be had 
in the month of Bohag (April-May). The only remedy adopted against locusts is one 
which the people appear to have invented for themselves. They sprinkle the 
threatened crops with water in which salt has been dissolved, and in which onions 
have been steeped. This remedy is said to have been effectual in 1879, after 
some time probably the locust would have moved on in any case.” 
Locusts IN THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY, EXCLUDING SIND. 
In the autumn of 1890 flights of Acridium peregrinum from North-Western 
ae India penerated into the Bombay Deccan and Kon- 
kan, and did slight damage over considerable areas. 
An account of these flights has been given in the report on Acridium peregri- 
num, and we are now chiefly concerned with the locusts which invaded the 
Presidency in 1882-83, though it should also be noticed that, according to 
Hunter’s Gazetteer, locusts appeared in 1878 in Kolaba and damaged the cold 
weather crops of 1878-79, nothing further, however, being recorded about 
them. : 
In 1882-83 locusts proved destructive throughout the whole of the Bombay 
Deccan and Konkan, and though the identity of the insects concerned was not 
altogether definitely ascertained, the history of the invasion was very com- 
pletely recorded in numerous official reports. The sections, therefore, on the 
history of the invasion and on the remedies adopted have been taken, much 
of them verbatim, from the reports of the Bombay Government by Mr. J. 
Nugent, as recorded in the Records of the Revenue and Agricultural Depart- 
ment of the Government of India. ‘The section on the life-history of the 
insect is from a report by Mr. Hatch, as reprinted in the Indian Forester, 
Volume X. 
In May and June, 1882, locusts were noticed in the south-west of the Presi- 
dency (Dharwar and Kanara Collectorates), but they 
pane history of the inva- ottracted little attention, as such swarms are annual 
visitors of the JXanarese forests, and neither in 
Kanara nor in Dharwar did they cause any material injury. With the setting 
in of the south-west monsoon, however, they spread in flights over the Presi- 
dency, to the north and north-east (Satara, Poona, Nasik, Ahmednagar, and 
Khandesh), and early in the rains proceeded to lay their eggs and die. These 
eggs hatched in the end of July, or beginning of August, and the young locusts 
