74 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



taiued from the records of the numerous inva- 

 sions which have taken place from A. D. 1820 

 up to A. D. 1867. In the year 18C8, liowevcr, 

 probably iu consequence of the unusually hot 

 summer, the Hateful Grasshopper must have 

 matured iu the Rocky Mountains about half a 

 month sooner than usual ; for in that year it in- 

 vaded Kansas in the forepart of August. 



Dry as these details may appear to some, it is 

 important to attend to them ; because it is cliieflj' 

 by the date of their appearance, that we are en- 

 abled to distinguish accurately between a swarm 

 of healthy and vigorous Grasshoppers, freshly 

 arrived from the Kocky Mountains, and another 

 swarm of diseased and barren Grasshoppers, 

 reared in the loivlands of the Mississippi valley. 

 And now, without further preface, we shall 

 proceed to show what becomes of these last, 

 after they have taken wing and disappeared 

 from the land of their nativity during the latter 

 part of June and the forepart of July. 



Mr. D. "W. Kauffman, of Des Moines, Iowa, 

 President of the Iowa State Horticultural So- 

 ciety, who certainly ought to know something 

 about the spring hatch of 18C7-8, as it damaged 

 his nursery stock in 1808 to the extent of $10,000, 

 informs us that it took wing and disappeared 

 from his neighborhood from the 3d to the 5th of 

 July. Some of them, he says, flew through the 

 air as far as Davenport, Iowa, a place on the 

 Mississippi river, lying- about 150 miles to the 

 east of Des Moines, hut did no material amount 

 of damage there. 



"On July 9th, 1868, the people of Jackson 

 county, Minnesota, were surprised to see the 

 sun nearly darkened b}' immense clouds of 

 Gi'asshoppers (probably Ckdoptenus spretus) 

 passing over that country. Some of the farmers 

 report that they lit on their wheat fields, and 

 comiiletely loaded the straw to the ground ; but 

 they soon raised again, and passed by in a 

 northerly direction with the wind, doing little 

 or no damage. They continued to jjass over 

 occasionally for several da5's afterwards — -all 

 going north, as the wind was south." — II. A. 

 Munger, in Farmers' Union (Minn.), August, 

 1868. 



Mr. Henry Hilvers, of Lafayette county, in 

 the southwest corner of Wisconsin, personally 

 informed us, at Galena, Ills., that in the middle 

 of August, 1868, he witnessed the migration 

 southwards of what, from his description, must 

 have been a vast swarm of these same barren 

 and diseased Grasshoppers, wandering Mildly 

 from region to region, and destined to perish 

 eventually, without reproducing their species. 

 According to his account, millions upon millions 



of them flew high in the air over his fanu, 

 traveling from north to south, and presenting 

 the same resemblance to a heavy snow-storm, 

 which has been remarked by so many in the 

 case of the true Hateful Grasshopper, when it 

 descends from the Rocky Mountains upon the 

 lowlands of the Mississippi valley. Only a few 

 of them, as he told us, descended to the earth, 

 and these only for a short time, after wliich they 

 rose up again in the air, and rejoined their com- 

 panions. These few were examined, both by 

 Mr. Hilvers and by his daughter, and, iu the 

 opinion of both these two parties, they cor- 

 responded in size with specimens of the true 

 Hateful Grasshopper, which we had on exliibi- 

 tiou at Galena. 



It may be asked, " How can we tell that tliis 

 swarm of Grasshoppers seen by Mr. Hilvers was 

 not a fresh arrival from the Rocky Mountains?"' 

 "We answer : First, that, upon such a supposition 

 (inasmuch as, when seen by Mr. Hilvers, they 

 Avere flying southwards), we should certainly 

 have heard of them afterwards descending some- 

 where in north Illinois, and commencing their 

 usual course of devastation and egg-laying, 

 whereas nobody near Galena seems to have 

 heard of any such thing ; and. Secondly, that the 

 date of their arrival in southwest Wisconsin will 

 not correspond with any such hypothesis. It is 

 very true that, in 1868, the Hateful Gi'asshopper 

 invaded the cultivated, or eastern, parts of Kan- 

 sas at the unusually early date of August 12th ; 

 but, at the customary rate at which these insects 

 progress, after they reach a fertile country (from 

 five to ten miles a da}', according to Mr. Goble 

 of Kansas) , they could not possibly have reached ■ 

 the southwest corner of Wisconsin in less than 

 a month and a quarter after their arrival in 

 Kansas, or say from the middle to the last of 

 September; whereas, the actual date of their 

 arrival in southwest Wisconsin was the middle 

 of August. 



One more such case and we have done. In 

 1867, about the last of July or the first of August, 

 an immense swarm of night-flying insects — as 

 we were informed by Capt. Beebe, of Galena — 

 lit upon Soulard's place, which lies upon the 

 Mississippi river, west of Galena, and stripped 

 the forest trees there of their foliage, for a space 

 about a quarter to half a mile long and about 

 twenty rods wide. They were heard in the 

 night, by several observers, to come through 

 the air with a roaring and rushing noise, such 

 as has been commonly noticed to be produced 

 by flights of the true Hatefnl Grasshopper; but 

 in the morning nothing was to be seen of them 

 but the devastation they had caused, neither had 



