444 REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



count for the ravages of migratory locusts in the Atlantic States, since 

 swarms have been known in that section of the country to fly from 

 locality to locality, doing immense damage. 



We know that migratory locusts do commit sad havoc in the Eastern 

 States from time to time, and are so effectual in their work of destruc- 

 tion that many persons are led to suppose that the Rocky Mountain 

 species has suddenly found its way among them. Among the earlier 

 accounts of the flights and ravages of migratory locusts in this section 

 of country, we find in Harris's Treatise on Injurious Insects an extract 

 from the travels of President D wight, wherein '^ they are recorded as 

 being most destructive in Vermont in 1797 and 1798, and as collecting 

 in clouds, rising in the air and taking extensive flights— even covering 

 persons employed in raising a church steeple, who, in such position, 

 saw the insects flying far above their he'ads." He also quotes from 

 Williamson's History of Maine, that, in 1749 and 1754, they were very 

 numerous and voracious; that, " in 1743 and 1756, they covered the 

 whole country and threatened to devour everything green." In 1874, 

 among other communications, we received the following, descriptive of 

 locust ravages in New Hampshire: 



Dear Sir : I see a note in the New York Tribune requestiiij; those from the locust 

 regions to send you specimens of the variety. I send you a vial of them to-day by 

 mail. They have been quite plenty in the Merrimack Valley on some farms — they 

 have eaten all of our garden vegetables ; in others they left us a small share. The 

 small ones are the most plenty and the ones that have done the most mischief. I should 

 like to know if they are of the same variety that infested the West. 



Yours, truly, LEWIS COLBY. 



BoscAWEN, Merrimac County, New Hampshire, September 17, 1874. 



The following account of a visitation of these locusts in Cumberland 

 County, Maine, in 1821, by Dr. U. T. True, is so circumstantial that it 

 is given in full, as quoted by Mr. S. H. Scudder:^"^ 



During the haying season the weather was dry and hot, and these hungry locusts 

 stripped the leaves from the clover and herds-grass, leaving nothing but the naked 

 stems. In consequence, the hay-crop was seriously diminished in value. So ravenous 

 had they become that they would attack clover, eating it into shreds. Rake and pitch- 

 fork handles, made of white ash, and worn to a glossy smoothness by use, would be 

 found nibbled over by them if left within their reach. 



As soon as the hay was cut and they had eaten every livirg thing, they removed to 

 the adjacent crops of grain, completely stripping the leaves ; climbing the naked stalks, 

 they would eat off the stems of wheat and rye just below the head, and leave them to 

 drop to the ground. I well remember assisting in sweeping a large cord over the 

 heads of wheat after dark, causing the insects to drop to the ground, where most of 

 them would remain during the night. During harvest-time it was my painful duty, 

 with a younger brother, to pick uj) the fallen wheat-heads for threshing; they 

 amounted to several bushels. 



Their next attack was upon the Indian corn and potatoes. They stripped the leaves 

 and ate out the silk from the corn, so that it was rare to harvest a full ear. Among 

 forty or fifty bushels of corn spread out in the corn-rcora, cot an ear could be found 

 not mottled with detached kernels. 



While these insects were more than usually abundant in the town generally, it was 



s^Hayden's Report on the Geological Survey of Nebraska; and "The Distribution cf Intectsin Kew 

 Hampshire," p. 375. 



