494 BULLETIN UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SUEVEY. 



The farmer on such occasions usually sits down in blank despair, and 

 in gloomy silence beholds the work of destruction ; nor can we wonder 

 at it when we consider the suddenness and magnitude of the attack. 

 It is therefore certain that the only means of counteracting these inroads 

 must be preventive ; and therefore it may well be asked, What are they, 

 and are any of them feasible ? 



1st. It would certainly be in vain for even the national government 

 to attempt to exterminate these insects by destroying their eggs in the 

 various hatching-grounds which extend from British America to Colo- 

 rado. 



2d. If the swarms which reach the border States come from a limited 

 area along the east flank of the mountains, the destruction of the eggs 

 by any temporary means, even if possible, would be of comparatively 

 little value, as the hordes sweeping down from the mountain regions 

 would soon replace them. Irrigation, so far as I can see, is the only 

 permanent means, and this, I am satisfied, from a careful study of the 

 drainage of these regions, is possible only in the area named, and in a 

 portion of that section of the Upper Missouri west of the Judith Mount- 

 ains. 



3d. Signal -stations in these regions connected by telegraph lines with 

 the section they visit might possibly give warning in time to gather 

 such crops as would be of value, but these lines would have to be so 

 arranged as to trace the usual line of march of these insects. What 

 effect firing the prairies on their approach would have I am unable to 

 say, buc it is possible this might cause them to move on, as was the case 

 in some instances mentioned in the accounts of their invasions recorded. 



4th. Although I have but little faith in Indian industry, yet it may 

 be that a premium offered for eggs and grasshoppers would induce 

 Indians to gather them in the regions over which they roam ; and, as the 

 government undertakes to feed these people, it might be well enough to 

 make the trial, and thus perhaps beget in the younger Indians some faint 

 idea of industry and its results. If the experiment should prove suc- 

 cessful it would be some help, be it ever so small, towards staying the 

 ravages of these locust j)ests, and it would be simply another modo of 

 paying the Indian, and, if rightly planned, no additional expense to the 

 government. 



As regards the resulting brood, the farmer does not appear to be so 

 helpless as he does with the incoming hordes. The former coming 

 gradually, and presenting various points of attack, does not fill him with 

 terror, as do the suddenness and magnitude of the attack in the latter 

 case. In an article of mine, recently published in the Prairie Farmer, I 

 stated that the farmers, after a few years' experience with these inspects, 

 generally learn all the means of local defense possible; and, as a gen- 

 eral rule, the entomologist must learn these, not from any scientific 

 knowledge of the insect, but from the practical experiments made by 



