APPEIVDIX I, 



MR. ALLEiT WHITMAN'S EEPORT FEOM MINNESOTA. 



Saint Paul, Minn., Decemher 20, 1877. 



Sir : I have the honor to submit the following report of observations upon the 

 Rocky Mountain locust in Minnesota during the year 1877 : 



A report upon the locust in Minnesota in 1877 properly begins where the report of a 

 preceding year closed, with the deposit of eggs in the year 1876. The amount and 

 extent of these deposits were determined last year from circulars sent to most of the 

 infected counties, inquiring — 



1. The dates between which locusts had appeared in greatest numbers. 



2. The dates between which they had appeared to deposit eggs in greatest numbers. 



3. The extent of the deposits ; and • 



4. How late in the season locusts had remained. 



Replies to these circulars were received from three hundred and fifteen townships 

 in thirty-two counties, and reports of a similar nature were received from the audi- 

 tors of those counties which were not attacked until late in August or in September. 

 The information derived from all these sources denoted in general that the portion of 

 the State in which eggs were laid more or less thickly was bounded on the west by 

 the State line, nearly, from Moorhead, on the north, to the Iowa line, while on the 

 south the deposit reached eastward to about the longitude of Austin. On the north 

 and east the boundary line was irregular. Starting from Moorhead it included the 

 southern part of Clay County, the southwest corner of Becker, the southern part of 

 Todd, the extreme southwest corner of Morrison, and reached the Mississippi at Sauk 

 Rapids. The eastern limit from Sauk Rapids southward was along the Mississippi 

 River (a few miles to the east of it) to Elk River, thence southward, including portions 

 of Hennepin, Scott, Rice, Steele, and Mower counties. This was the line as shown in 

 a map of the locust area in Minnesota contained in "A Report of the Geological and 

 Natural History Survey of Minnesota for the year 1876," published by the State Uni- 

 versity. It was intended to show the extreme eastern limit of the egg-deposit for the 

 year, and the hatching of 1877 has proved its general correctness. But while it was 

 drawn far enough to the east to include all or nearly all the scattering squads of lo- 

 custs that hatched during the spring along the eastern limit of the locust-area, the 

 limit of severe injury lay, in most cases, many miles to the west of this boundary line. 



The line, as drawn, included the whole or parts of forty-four counties. It was 

 well known during the fall that in many of these counties the number of eggs depos- 

 ited was too small to excite any fears of serious injury from the young locusts. This 

 was particularly true of Red River Valley, and of considerable portions of the hatch- 

 ing grounds of the spring of 1876, which for some reason had been passed over during 

 the summer without receiving any great amount of eggs. In still other counties lying 

 along the eastern portion of the egg-area there was reason to fear that the eggs were 

 deposited in sufficient numbers to cause serious damage. In still other counties lying 

 in the central portion of this area it was well known that eggs had been deposited in 

 greater numbers than in any preceding year. It was known not only from the fact 

 that certain favorable spots were found to be densely packed with eggs, but also from 

 the fact that the laying had begun early in the season (by July 10 in many town- 

 ships), and had continued through July and August, and that two, three, or even four 

 bodies of locusts had followed each other during the summer, and that each had left 

 eggs behind. There was good reason for the gravest apprehensions, and the legisla- 

 ture used its best endeavors during the winter to devise a plan by which the evil might 

 be somewhat averted. That this plan, as devised (a bounty for the destruction of the 

 young locusts in the spring and summer), was so palpably'inadequate as to bring its 

 own futility with it, is due to the fact that when the hatching fairly began the young 

 came forth in such immense numbers in some ten or twelve counties that the whole 

 provision for their destruction would have been more than exhausted in these alone, 

 leaving all other counties to shift for themselves ; while in other parts the hatching 

 was so scattered and uncertain that plainly no one plan of enlisting a common war- 

 fare could be adopted throughout the whole infested area. Under these circurgstances 

 the idea of a bounty was gradually abandoned, and county and town authorities, and 



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