452 REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



in any other part of California. * * * In the southern coast counties they were 

 comparatively few in number and did very little injury. They were more trouble- 

 some around Los Angeles than anywhere else in the south.— [Furnished by the Smith- 

 sonian Institution. 



The Sacramento Union, of September 19, 1855, states that the " most 

 remarkable circumstance we have ever been called on to notice in this 

 locality was the flight of the grasshoppers on Saturday and yesterday. 

 For about three hours in the middle of the day the air, at an elevation 

 of about 200 feet, was literally thick with them, flying in the direction 

 of Yolo. They could be the more readily perceived by looking in the 

 direction of the sun. Great numbers fell upon the streets on Saturday, 

 absolutely taking the city by storm, and yesterday they commenced the 

 wholesale destruction of everything green in the gardens of the neigh- 

 borhood. Their flight, en masse^ resembled a thick snow-storm, and 

 their depredations the sweep of a scythe." 



The Sacramento Valley papers mention that whole orchards, gardens, 

 and vineyards have been consumed by them. Entire fields of young 

 grain, of crops, and vegetables have been eaten up within the space of 

 a single day, leaving the ground like a wilted, blackened desert. In 

 some parts of the valley they annoyed the passengers and horses of the 

 public stages to such an extent as to cause the greatest inconvenience, 

 and appear, in some cases, to have positively endangered human life. 



Eegarding this 1855 invasion we have further received the following 

 account from Mr. J. W. A. Wright, of Sacramento, who obtained his 

 information from Mr. William Johnston, of Eichland, Cal. : " About the 

 middle of June, 1855, the swarms, like clouds darkening the sun, on the 

 first day came from the east and passed over to the west, into Yolo and 

 other counties on the west side of the Sacramento Eiver. The day was 

 clear and warm, not very windy, there being a gentle south breeze. The 

 swarms would rise and fly every few hundred yards. In crossing the 

 Sacramento Eiver they rose higher, perhaps three hundred yards up ; 

 immense numbers fell into the river. I heard of them all up and down 

 the Sacramento Eiver. They remained about two weeks in the county 

 and then gradually disappeared. About one-fourth of the crops of Sac- 

 ramento County were destroyed ; everything green was devoured, es- 

 pecially fruit and fruit-trees, ripe wheat and barley suffering but little. 

 Since then Sacramento Valley has occasionally suffered a little from the 

 same species of locust, which was light brown and about one and a half 

 inches long." As this swarm came about the middle of June there is no 

 probability that it was Caloptenus spretus, as, if the Eocky Mountain 

 locust should succeed in crossing the desert of Nevada and Oregon into 

 California from its home in the Snake Eiver Valley, about Boise City, 

 it would not reach Shasta or the Sacramento Valley before the last 

 of July or the early jjart of August. It is most probable that the spe- 

 cies was either Caloptenus femurrubrum or C. atlanis^ which had bred 

 among the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada or the plains lying at 



