80 REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



strong from the north, and the locusts were checked and ceased to fly ; 

 but on the two following days, the wind blowing from the south again, 

 they continued to pass over. From this time on till the first week in 

 August they were leaving the State, the direction being uniformly north- 

 west. As soon as they became winged, myriads flew over Webster City, 

 apparently going southward. At Athol, Sioux County, our correspond- 

 ent reports that " after the departure of the young locusts, swarms from 

 the north northeast and northwest passed over July 15, 16, 20, 27, 28, 

 and 31, August 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 21, and 22." At Council Bluffs " fresh swarms 

 passed over from the north, but did no damage and laid no eggs." At 

 Des Moines, "fresh swarms came from the north and northwest in Au- 

 gust, but did little damage." Locusts passed over Sac City in great 

 numbers during August, going south-southeast and southwest, but none 

 alighted. (Whitman.) 



THE LOCUST IN MINNESOTA."^ 



Besides those years in which the region now comprised within the 

 State of Minnesota has been scourged in common with other States and 

 Territories, there are various statements, allusions, and traditions to be 

 collected, which go to show that the Northwest has been repeatedly 

 visited by the locust in years previous or additional to those in which 

 such occurrences have been historically recorded. Some of these tra- 

 ditions are probably of no value, whatever their intrinsic probability 

 may be. Among these are the traditions, said to be derived from the 

 Indians, that the locusts had formerly taken possession of the country 

 and held it for seventeen years ; also that they had, in times past, con- 

 sumed the vegetation as far east as Stillwater (though this may per- 

 haps refer to the year 185G). Setting all these aside, the statement 

 made by Capt. Jonathan Carver (in his "Narrative" of the year 1766), 

 that large swarms of locusts " infest these parts and the interior colonies 

 and oftentimes do much mischief," shows that such occurrences were 

 repeated. It is difficult to say what regions are denoted by " these 

 parts "j but his usual application of the word " interior " is to the regions 

 from the great lakes westward. 



The visitations of locusts in Lord Selkirk's Red River colony in 1818 

 can hardly be said to concern Minnesota, as but a small portion of that 

 colony lay within what are now the borders of Minnesota; but it is not 

 improbable that the wilderness to the northwest was overrun in those 

 years. 



1830 and 1842. — Still further allusions may be found in the follow- 

 ing extract from a letter of Rev. J. A. Gilfillan, missionary at the 

 White Earth Indian agency, to the Minnesota grasshopper commis- 

 .sion, 1875: 



"My informant, Michel Yillebrun (a Missouri River half-breed, resid- 

 ing at the agency, now seventy years old, whom I consider a reliable 



' Prepared for the Commission by Mr, Allen Wbdtman, Assistant to the Commission. 



I 



