434 REPOET UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



country. Certain strange plants are said to yet mark the path through 

 the Southern States which Sherman's soldiers took in their march to the 

 sea, and a number of plants new to the country are known to have been 

 introduced into France by the Germans during the late Franco-Prussian 

 war. So the locust incursions and devastations in Kansas and Missouri 

 were followed by some curious changes. These changes consisted mostly 

 in the great prevalence of plants that in ordinary seasons are scarcely 

 noticed. The Amarantus hlitoides, alresalj spoken of (p. 254), spread at 

 an unprecedented rate, and grew in great luxuriance. Immediately after 



Fig. 106.— Geeen Larva of White-lined Moexikg SPHUirx. (After Eiley.) 



the locusts left, the common purslane started everywhere and usurped 

 the place of many other species. The common Nettle {Solanum Caro- 

 Jinense) and the Sand burr (S. rostrattim) spread in 1875 to an alarming 

 degree, and the Poke-weed {Phytolacca decandra) was very abundant. All 

 kinds of grasses grew very luxuriantly during the summer, a fact due to 

 the wet and favorable weather j but some kinds ^^ that are rare in ordi- 

 nary seasons got the start and grew in great strength and abundance. 

 Among these none are more notable than the sudden appearance very gen- 

 erally over the locust- devastated region of what is usually called a new 

 grass. Springing up wherever the blue grass gets killed out, it proves a 

 Godsend to the people, for while it is young and tender, cattle like it and 

 fatten upon it. This grass is the Yilfa vaginceflora, an annual which is 

 common from the Atlantic to the Eocky Mountains. Unnoticed during 

 ordinary seasons, the destruction of the blue grass and other plants by 

 the too close gnawing of the locusts gives it the advantage in the strug- 

 gle for existence — an advantage which is soon lost, however, as the nor- 



FiG. 107.— Black Lakva of White-lined Morxin'g Sphinx. (After Eiley.) 



mal relations between species are assumed again in a few years after the 

 disturbing influence has ceased to be operative. Indeed, since the Yilfa 



ssProf. G. C. Brodhead (Trans. St. Louis Ac. Sc. Ill, p. 348 ) mentions more particularly Arisiida oligo- 

 stachya, in ordinary seasons of rare occuirence around Pleasaot Hill, as reaching the unusual height of 

 two feet, and being very abundant. Eragrostis poceoides, ordinarily recumbent and scarcely noticed 

 in yards and alon^ roadsides, grew in profusion, and three and a half feet high, " looking like meadows 

 ready to be mowed." Panicum sanguinale was luxuriant enough to be cut for hay. 



