PEEFACE. 



This report is the more immediate result of the first year's work of the 

 Commission, and is respectfully submitted for the benefit of the farmers 

 of the West, who have so sorely suffered from the injuries inflicted by 

 the insect of which it treats. The Commissioners hope and believe that 

 it will form an invaluable record, for future reference and use, of all that 

 is at present known of so important a subject. 



Our work was ordered primarily for the benefit of the farmers of the 

 locust-stricken country, and we have endeavored to present with great- 

 est prominence those features of the subject most important from the 

 practical and economic stand-point. There is, however, matter of a 

 more or less scientific and technical nature invariably connected with 

 investigations like that we are charged with, and the report would, in our 

 judgment, be incomplete were such matter omitted. In order to better 

 enable the reader who cares little or nothing for such technical details 

 to pass over them, they are printed in smaller type than the text. 



We have divided the locust area into three regions, which we have 

 called, respectively, the Permanent, the Suhpermartentjand the Temporary, 

 As these terms will be frequently used for the &^ ke of precision and 

 conciseness in the body of the Eeport, we here call tlio attention of the 

 reader to Map 1, on which they are represented. 



In order to prevent the volume from becoming too bulky, we have 

 been obliged to shorten some of the concluding chapters, and to omit 

 entirely an elaborate bibliography of locust literature in other countries, 

 prepared for us by Mr. B. P. Mann, of Cambridge, Mass., as also a de- 

 scriptive paper on the locusts of the Pacific slope, by Mr. S. H. Scudder. 



Much interesting material in the form of classified replies to circulars, 

 detailed data used in making up the Eeport, and the work of special 

 assistants, is relegated to a series of appendices at the end of the volume. 

 These are paginated separately in brackets, with a view of hastening the 

 printing of the Eeport, and they are arranged numerically to facili- 

 tate reference, as the diff'erent parts will frequently be alluded to in the 

 body of the work by means of corresponding numbers in parentheses. 

 In these appendices will also be found a list of correspondents (App. 26), 

 who have, in one way or another, assisted the Commission. These are 

 given by States, with the post-ofQce addresses arranged alphabetically, 

 in order to avoid the constant repetition of full names in the different 

 classified replies to circulars. The insect drawings for the woodcuts 

 have been made from life, many of them by Mr. Eiley, some of them by 



