INFLUENCE OF PRAIRIE FIRES ON LOCUST INCREASE. 421 



CHAPTER XIV. 

 INFLUENCE OF PEAIEIE FIRES ON LOCUST INCREASE. 



" The statement has been ofteu made, and advocated with consider- 

 able ingenuity, that the visitations of the Rocky Mountain locust are 

 due to the practice of burning off the dry grass of our Western prairies. 

 All the arguments in this direction, however plausible at first sight, 

 will not bear the test of close scrutiny. The theory is that burning the 

 grass is the occasion of drought, and that locusts come only in droughty 

 seasons. One writer in the Kansas Farmer for September 23, 1874, even 

 asserts that ' the unbroken succession of curses' that have afflicted that 

 State, ' all spring from the one first grand cause, the burning of the 

 prairie grasses,' and, after explaining that hot, scorching winds and 

 simoons originate in desert countries, he avers that * it matters not 

 whether the country is an original desert, or whether it is made so by 

 the action of our Western prairie fires. For all present i)urposes the 

 two are reduced to a common level and produce a common result — 

 drought, hot winds, and locusts.' 



^'The reason given why the locusts can come only in droughty seasons 

 is that they cannot fly in a moist atmosphere, and the facts that they 

 do not readily fly early in the morning, and that the farther east you 

 go, or, in other words, the more moist the atmosphere becomes, the 

 insects diminish in number and consequent power for harm." 



As such views are by no means uncommon in the West, we adduce 

 several reasons for believing that there is no connection whatever be- 

 tween i)rairie-fires and locust ravages. 



''1. It is by no means proved that the simoons which occasionally 

 sweep over our Western States and Territories have their origin in any 

 partof that vast prairie country. Some of the more localof these hot, dry 

 winds may originate or acquire their peculiarly high temperature on the 

 mauvaises terres of Wyoming or the tablelands of Arizona and Mexico; 

 but the more general simoons most probably have their origin at a far 

 greater distance from us, viz, in the tropics. These simoons in Missouri 

 always blow from the southwest, in Kansas from south-southwest, and in 

 Eastern Colorado from the south, or a few points east of south ; and their 

 injurious and scorching effects are not infrequently felt before the frost 

 in Kansas and the country to the west is fairly out of the ground. 



^' 2. It is well known that the buffalo-grass ranges over a vast extent 

 of our Western plains, and that it does not furnish a very dense or thor- 

 ough covering, even when unburned, and assists very little in retaining 

 moisture or preventing evaporation. 



*' 3. Our own observations for the past seventeen years in this Western 

 prairie country lead us to the conclusion that fires more often succeed 

 than precede drought, and that they may more justly be looked upon as 



