JJo. 4J Locusts, 105 



locust, though it may possibly have been the insect Phymatens miliaris, 

 which was sent to the Indian Museum in September 1890 by General 

 Collett with the information that it was common in the neighbourhood 

 o£ Shillong. The following is taken from a report, dated 15th February 

 1883, by the Director of Agriculture in Assam : — > 



" I spent three weeks niarching'in the Nowgong district, and visited most of he 

 district, except the hill tracts. The Kakotiphoring, or Paper grass-hopper, as the locust 

 is called, is very well known. It is said to attain a length of six to seven inches. It 

 breeds in the tall reed and grass jungle, especially in the jungle at the foot of the hills 

 along the south of the district (the Khasia and Mikir Hills). The time of the appear- 

 ance of the insect is in the early spring, and it continues to feed till July. 



" Local visitations of locusts are common enough. I found it generally stated 

 that they took place every two or three years. But one general invasion was well 

 remembered everywhere ; the date was 1879 : it began early and ended late, so as to 

 include both mustard and rice in the area of devastation. The mustard ripens in 

 January, 



" The direction in which the locust swarms moved was somewhat different in 

 different places. Near the Khasia and Mikir Hills they seemed to come from the 

 south, i.e. 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 regularity 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 oniong 

 have been steeped. This remedy is said to have been effectual in 1879, after some 

 time ; probably the locusts 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 India penetrated into the Bombay Deccan 

 and Konkan, and did slight damage over con- 

 siderable areas. An account of these flights has been given in 

 the report on Acridium peregrinum, 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 completely recorded in numerous official reports. The 



