390 EEPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



tar and sheet-iron which may be needed, not only in Meeker County, but throughout 

 the State. He telegraphed to Milwaukee and Chicago to secure all the coal-tar that 

 can be had there, and if this supply is not sufficient, arrangements will be promptly 

 made to secure it from other sources. Similar orders were telegraphed for an indefinite 

 supply of sheet-iron, and these materials will now be furnished by the governor either 

 at Minneapolis or Saint Paul at the rate cf $3 per barrel for coal-tar and 4| cents per 

 pound for sheet-iron, and the railroads will carry it free to any point on their lines. 

 About 250 barrels of coal-tar have been ordered for Meeker County alone, and some five 

 tons of sheet-iron, and it is thought they will require perhaps twice this when they 

 get the whole people to work. The success of the Eobbins's 'hopperdozer has had a 

 wonderful effect, the committee say, in lifting the cloud of despondency which had 

 settled on the brows of the farmers. The discovery that by the expenditure of one or 

 two dollars in smearing a piece or two of sheet-iron with some coal-tar, and dragging 

 it over the ground, they can easily exterminate the enemy that had seemed so formid- 

 able, and that seven cents' worth of tar will swallow up a bushel of grasshopi^ers, 

 has put them all in splendid spirits, and they are now going to work with a will, one and 

 all, to clean out the pest. * * * We are authorized to announce that Governor 

 Pillsbury has made arrangements now deemed adequate to supi)ly any amount of 

 sheet-iron and coal-tar at the bare cost of the materials, and now that it has been 

 demonstrated that the 'hopper can be destroyed and the crops of every farmer saved 

 by this cheap instrument, the public-spirited citizens and the official authorities 

 of every county should at once — to-day, before night — set on foot a movement for en- 

 listing the whole body of farmers in the prompt and immediate application of this 

 efficacious remedy for the locust plague. — [Saint Fanl Pioneer Press and Tribune. 



The simple pan so extensively employed, and which was known as the 

 Robbins 'hopperdozer,^^ is shown in the accompanying illustration (Fig. 

 93), the general plan being that of the ordinary road-scraper. Its sim- 



TiG, 93.— The Robbins Coal-tar Pan. 



plicity and durability account for its general use. It was usually drawn 

 by hand, though several pans were frequently bound together and drawn 

 by horses ; while, in some instances, certain improvements in the way of 

 mounting on wheels, so as to permit its being pushed from behind, were 

 also adopted. We saw some with a wire screen or cover hinged to the 

 back, so that the insects might be secured when the pan was not in 

 motion 5 but the cover seemed superfluous. We also saw lime and kero- 

 sene mixed so as to form a mortar substituted for the coal tar. 



92 A word that came into very ger eral use last year airono; farmers for coal-oil and coal-tar macbines, 

 and which doubtless takes its origin from doze, in reference to the toxic effect of the coal-tar ou the 

 locusts. 



