56 REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



The next year (1875) the young hatched in immense numbers over an 

 area variously estimated at from 250 to 350 miles from north to south 

 and from 200 to 270 miles from east to west, embracing portions of 

 Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. "The tract in which the injury done 

 by the destructive enemy was worst was confined to the two western 

 tiers of counties in Missouri, and the four tiers of counties in Kansas, 

 bounded by the Missouri Eiver on the east. The greatest damage ex- 

 tended over a strip 25 miles each side of the Missouri Eiver, from Omaha 

 to Kansas City, and then extended south to the southwestern limit of 

 Missouri. About three- quarters of a million of people were, to a greater 

 or less extent, made sufferers. The experience of different localities was 

 not equal or uniform. Contiguous farms sometimes presented the con- 

 trast of abundance and utter want, according to the caprices of the 

 invaders, or according as they hatched in localities favorable to the 

 laying of the eggs. This fact gave rise to contradictory reports, each 

 particular locality generalizing from its own experience. The fact is, 

 however, that over the region described there was a very general devas- 

 tation, involving the destruction of three-fourths of all field and garden 

 crops. While the injury was greatest in the area defined above^ the 

 insects hatched in more or less injurious numbers from Texas to British 

 America, the prevalence of the insects in Manitoba being such that in 

 many parts little or no cultivation was attempted.^' (Riley.) 



Missouri had never before been visited by a calamity so appaling and 

 so disastrous in its results as the locust ravages of 1875, and detailed 

 returns of the damage done in this State showed a lossof over $15,000,000. 

 (Eiley.) 



In 1876 no trouble was experienced in the spring, there being in the 

 border States little damage done by the young, except in portions of 

 Minnesota and Colorado, and it was hoped that no further losses would 

 ensue this year. But locusts bred in great quantities in Montana, and in 

 British America, north of this Territory, and in Wyoming, Dakota and 

 Colorado, this being a year of unusual drought in those Territories, and 

 in August and the autumn following, immense swarms swept over the 

 plains, falling upon the larger part of Kansas and I^ebraska, the west- 

 ern half of Iowa, and some of the western counties in Missouri, and 

 reaching into the Indian Territory, Texas and the northwest corner of 

 Arkansas. Besides this, local swarms hatching in Minnesota early in 

 the year flew south and southwest into Iowa and Nebraska, and they 

 laid eggs in August. 



The spring of 1877 opened with dismal prospects all over the States 

 east of the plains, as well as in Colorado. Happily it was a spring in 

 which there was an unusual rain-fall in April, May, and June, the coun- 

 try along, the Missouri being flooded in places. The weather was also 

 exceptionally cool; and this condition of things extended over Colorado, 

 Northern Utah, Wyoming, Central Montana, and British America. lu 

 consequence of this season of wet and cold, the young grasshoppers 



