CHRONOLOGY: KANSAS, 1854- J 866. 69 



1854. — Locusts visited Kausas, but how extensively is not known ; the 

 swarm arrived in the autumn. — (T. 0. Wells.) 



1855. — The eggs laid the previous autumn hatched in the spring of 

 1855, " and if I remember aright one of our old farmers who was then 

 living on the south side of the Kansas River told me that his wheat was 

 all destroyed by them. I do not remember seeing any myself that year. 

 It was dry in the spring, but after about the middle of May we had fre- 

 quent and very heavy showers all through the season." — (T. 0. Wells.) 



1856-'57. — '' In the autumns of 1856 and 1857 the wheat and corn 

 leaves were eaten off around the outside of fields, I suppose by Galop- 

 tenus spretus^ though I never noticed them in great numbers so as to 

 attract particular attention until 1860." — (T. G. Wells.) 



1860. — That locusts appeared in Kansas this year is affirmed by 

 Mr. T. G. Wells, who remarks, '' What I have said about them in 1860, 

 and from then to the present time, I Icnoic to be true from my personal 

 observation, with the single exception of 1864." — (T. G. Wells, Manhat- 

 tan, Kansas.) 



1864. — " I was East that [this] year, but am told by those that were 

 here that it was very dry, and that the locusts were here." — (T. G. 

 Wells.) 



1866. — The first record of any invasion we are aware of refers to this 

 year, though it is not improbable that a portion of the State, at least, 

 was overrun in 1820 or 1821, and, possibly, in 1846, but there are no 

 records to that effect extant. 



In August and September, 1-10, 1866, swarms of locusts arrived. In 

 August they made their appearance in the frontier settlements of Kan- 

 sas and Nebraska, and later, early in September, destroyed every green 

 thing in tracts in the eastern part of the State. On the Nemaha Eiver 

 (which, however, lies mostly in Nebraska) and is in the eastern limits of 

 the State, they arrived in clouds " glittering in the sunlight like huge 

 flakes of snow," and destroyed the late corn and the winter wheat, and 

 began at once laying their eggs, so that the ground was fairly honey- 

 combed by their egg-cells. 



September 1. At Gouncil Grove *^ a tremendous shower of grass hop- 

 pers came from the south, completely filling the air as high as one could 

 see, and looking like a driving snow-storm" ; they eat every green thing. 

 In Allen Gounty they appeared September 11; *' they almost darken 

 the sun in their flight"; they eat everything green, including winter 

 wheat. "In Brown Gounty they covered a tract twelve miles in width, 

 and consumed pretty much everything green. Trees were stripped of 

 their leaves, and corn-fields literally stripped to the stalk. * * * 

 In Northwestern Kansas they filled the air so as to obscure the sun. 

 They have been traced for a distance of two hundred miles above Fort 

 Kearney. In Marysville the grasshoppers in that section eat every green 

 thing. The Leavenworth papers reported that a vast army of grass- 

 hoppers reached Lawrence from the west. They had cleaned out Topeka, 



