LOCUSTS OF BENGA L, MADRAS, ASSAM, & BOMBAY. 127 
did a large amount of damage, over a wide area, through the months of 
August and September. In the early part of October, with the setting in of 
the north-east monsoon, the young locust, which had by this time acquired 
wings, took flight and travelled with the prevailing wind in a south-westerly 
direction, doing some injury in the Poona Collectorate as they passed. They 
then struck the Western Ghats and spread slowly over the Konkan in Novem- 
ber, and thence travelled into the Native State of Sawantwari and the Kanara 
district, Durmg the remainder of the cold season and the hot weather (De- 
cember, 1882, to the end of May, 1883) the flights clung to the line of the Ghats 
occasionally venturing inland into Belgaum, Dharwar, the Kolhapur State, and 
Satara, and devouring the spring crops in the coast districts, but ordinarily 
returning to the vicinity of the hill ranges. With the commencement of the 
south-west monsoon, however, in the latter part of May, 1883, the flights began 
to move in a north-easterly direction, as they had done the preceding year, 
but in larger numbers, 
At the commencement of the rains they began to alight in vast numbers 
over an immense tract of country comprising the six Deccan collectorates of 
Sholapur, Poona, Khandesh, Ahmednagar, Satara, and Nasik, and also in the 
three coast collectorates of Ratnagiri, Kolaba, and Thana. They deposited 
their eggs and died, and early in August the young locusts hatched out in 
countless numbers, but were apparently more backward and possessed of less 
strength and stamina than were those of the preceding year. The unusually 
heavy rainfall killed vast numbers of these in different parts of the country, 
and elsewhere the insects seemed stunted and feeble, and grew but slowly. 
They were destroyed in vast numbers by the vigorous measures initiated by the 
officials, and were also said to be diseased and attacked by mites and nematode 
parasites. As late as November, the mass of the young locusts appeared unable 
to fly and made no general movement to the south-west, as they had done the 
year before. The invasion was, in fact, at an-end, and though (according 
to Hunter’s Gazetteer) swarms appeared in Sawantwari in 1883-84, no further 
injury of a serious nature seems to have occurred, 
The injury occasioned to the rain crops by the locusts was very considerable 
over a great portion of the Deccan and Konkan both in 1882 and 1883. But 
though some relief works were started, especially in the coast district, it was 
found, at the end of the invasion, that the abundance of the cold weather 
crops had compensated to so great an extent for the injury occasioned to the 
rain crop, that no wide-spread injury had been occasioned. 
he lifehictocwm Oe the Mr. Hatch describes the life-history of the locast, 
locust. as observed in the Konkan, as follows! :— 
“In the Konkan locusts coupled in great numbers between the 15th May and the 
15th June, 1883, and died off naturally immediately after the eges had been deposited. 
The eggs are deposited mostly in flat and gently sloping land of soft friable soil, rocky 
* From his report, as reprinted in the Indian Forester, Vol. X, p. 425, 
