8 REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



possible in the time you can give to this State. I desire from you, for publication, a 

 statement of the true condition and prospects as you find them. 



I have feared that the reports of addled eggs and disappearing insects are based on 

 hope instead of facts. If so, they cannot fail to work injury by quieting the people 

 with belief in a false security. If the eggs in the soil are still unhatched and in a 

 condition to produce in destructive numbers when the weather is propitious, it is far 

 better that the people know the worst and prepare for it without delay. 



I am satisfied that a determined and systematic effort will exterminate the locust 

 and save our growing crops, even if the worst be true as to the present hatching. Au 

 organization under the township law, or unanimity of volunteer action, with the means 

 now known to be effective in the destruction of these insects, cannot fail of substantial 

 success. 



To this end I hope you will favor me with a full report of your tour of observation, 

 together with such suggestions as to mode and time of destroying the locust, as your 

 observation and experience shall warrant. This statement from you will be accepted 

 as authentic by the great majority of our people, and will allay fear if there is no 

 danger, and awaken to action if a pending peril exists. 

 Very respectfully, 



GEO. T. ANTHONY, 



Governor of Kansas. 



Prof. C. V. Riley, 



Chief of United States Entomological Commission, Emporia, Kans. 



Saltna, Kans., May 10, 1877. 



My Dear Sm : Your favor of the 5th instant is before me. I am entirely of your 

 opinion as to the importance of getting at the real facts and prospects in connection 

 with locust injury. The dispatches to our papers are so often colored in the interest 

 of land-owners, and loan and real-estate agents, that the community at large places but 

 small reliance on them. It is, moreover, the avowed policy of many journals to sup- 

 press the truth about locust troubles, under the mistaken notion that such suppression 

 benefits; whereas no poliey is more injurious to a community in the end. 



In the present instance the favorable reports are, in the main, warranted ; and there 

 is no doubt in my mind that throughout the larger part of Kansas the battle is already 

 fought, and the future injury must be comparatively trifling. For nearly three weeks 

 I have been traveling and observing in Texas and Southeastern Kansas, and feel safe 

 in making the above statement for that part of your State which I have visited. 

 Throughout the locust-area of the State south of the Kansas Pacific Railroad — which area 

 includes most of the region bounded on the east by a line running from a little west of 

 Lawrence toward Fort Scott, and on the west by another passing up through Hutchinson 

 and Ellsworth — the eggs are laid in sufficient quantities to have given birth to locusts 

 enough to have eaten everything green by the time they attained full growth, under con- 

 ditions favorable to them. Many of the eggs were destroyed by the Anthomyia egg-par- 

 asite, and the other enemies described in my writings. Some of them hatched in the Fall, 

 and many more during the warm weather of the latter part of January and fore part 

 of February. The insects thus hatched perished. The bulk of the eggs hatched 

 during the last week of March and the early part of April. The young insects were very 

 thick then; they commenced to do injury and begat general fear. The farmers for 

 the most part fought them with energy. Then followed, from the middle of April on, 

 a period of cold and wet weather. The enemy rapidly weakened and was from all 

 quarters reported as disappearing. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE YOUNG. 



In every part of the State which I have visited, and where I have examined carefully 

 the condition of things, the young locusts have very largely, in some instances totally, 

 disappeared ; and I now have no doubt whatever that the reports of such disapiiear- 

 auce that are so general throughout the entire portion of the State that was threat- 

 ened, have their foundation in fact. This disappearance is generally attributed to 



