10^ Indian Museum Notes. [Vol. II, 



to increase the distress caused by the faraiue. The young- locusts began to 

 appear in January, and were found in great numbers in different districts 

 from that date on till September and Octoberj the earlier swarms being 

 found in the we.st and south of the Presidency, and the later ones in 

 the north and east. The winged locusts were first observed in the end 

 of March and beginning of April in the south-west (Wynaad and 

 Nilgiris), and they afterwards spread over the Presidency to the east and 

 north, not finally disappearing in the north-east until about November 

 and December. They were supposed, at the time, to have originated 

 locally in hills and waste lauds in different parts of the Presidency. The 

 evidence, however, seems rather to point to the locusts having started, in 

 the early part of the year, from the Wynaad and Nilgiri Hills, in the 

 south-west, and thence to have worked their way, with the prevailing 

 wind, over the Presidency to the north and east, occasionally stopping to 

 feed or to deposit their eggs in the ground ; for it is otherwise difficult 

 to account for the fact of their appearing so much earlier in the south- 

 west than in the north-east. Little is known of the life-history of the 

 insects, but it may be noticed that locusts were observed pairing in the 

 Salem district in the latter part of June, and also that the you ng locusts, 

 which were found in the early part of May in the Udamalpet taluq were 

 supposed to be the offspring of the large flights of winged locusts which 

 bad appeared in the preceding February in the same taluq. The connection 

 between the autumn broods of young locusts and those which appeared 

 in the early part of the year has not been made out satisfactorily. 



Of the measures adopted against these locusts, the most successful 

 seem to have been ; — the destruction of the swarms of young wingless 

 locusts by driving them into lines of burning straw ; the preventing the 

 flights of winged locusts from settling in the fields by lighting fires, 

 beatino- drums, and waving branches and cloths in the air, as soon as a 

 flight appeared J and the driving of the winged locusts out of the fields, 

 when they had already alighted, by beating through the crops. It is 

 said that in cases where winged flights were driven persistently through 

 a number of villages, without being allowed to settle, the locusts perished 

 without doing injury. The above account of the Madras locust invasion 

 of 1878 is chiefly taken from the official reports preserved in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Revenue and Agricultural Department of the Govern- 

 ment of India. With regard to the identity of the insects concerned in the 

 Madras locust invasion of 1878, nothing seems to have been ascertained 

 at the time of the invasion, though the insects were spoken of in one of 

 the reports as belonging to the species Loctista migratoria. This, however 

 may possibly have been due to the fact that the locust of Central Europe 

 is often referred to in old entomology books under this antiquated name ; 

 much importance, therefore, cannot be attached to the identification, and 



