[4] REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



^the farmers iu general, were left to adopt for themselves through the spring such 

 measures as seemed best adapted for immediate success. It may be added that there 

 is very trifling reason to regret that the bounty bill, as passed, proved a failure at the 

 very outset. As a means of defense, it would have proved useless in some cases and 

 needless in others. As a matter of relief or reimbursement for injury, it would have 

 gone iu a largo measure to help those who are already repaid by an abundant harvest. 



But the fact that in a large number of counties where serious injury was anticipated 

 the damage has been partially or totally averted ; that in many cases extensive deposits of 

 eggs were either followed by a limited amount of hatching, or that the injury begun by 

 the young in the spring was continually on the decrease until the locusts finally departed; 

 in short, the fact that what may perhaps have been Minnesota's most destructive locust 

 year is probably its best wheat year, is due to a combination of causes. These are a 

 limited amount of destruction of eggs through the efforts of the farmers in the fall 

 of 1876, a considerable destruction of the same by insect enemies, birds and other an- 

 imals, the destruction of the young by individual efforts during the spring, and more 

 than all else by a series of fortunate climatic conditions, especially during the spring 

 and early summer months, which, while they were in every respect favorable for the 

 growing grain, were throughout unfavorable for the development of the locust. This 

 again was followed in July and August by migrations so totally different from those 

 of former years that they were almost entirely harmless. To sum up the result, the 

 damage, so far as concerns wheat, is, according to the statement of the commissioner 

 of statistics for Minnesota, the Hon. T. M. Metcalf, confined to nineteen counties, con- 

 taining a vi^eat acreage of 337,188 acres. Of these nineteen counties, two suffered a 

 '' total loss of wheat ; one slightly injured ; eight counties are believed to have saved 

 half a crop ; one, a third ; one, a tenth ; two, two-thirds ; three, tfiree- quarters ; and 

 one, four-fifths." These statements were drawn from " the most careful estimates of 

 the bushels harvested by these counties," and while they are only estimates, it is not 

 probable, judging from past experience, that accurate statistics will add to the amount 

 estimated as destroyed. This is a result not only different from what was expected at 

 the beginning of the season, but also different from what would have been had the 

 spring of 1877 been similar to that of 1876. In the latter case we should have seen 

 serious destruction in a still larger number of counties, and a still longer list of coun- 

 ties injured. 



This impending danger aroused the farmers to unusual exertions during the fall of 

 1876. In counties where the trouble was an old one, conventions were held and meas- 

 ures taken to prevent the prairie-grass from being burned before the hatching season 

 of 1877. To preserve this grass and fire it just at the time when the locusts were 

 hatching, seemed to be one of the most feasible methods of general destruction, and 

 one which in past years had commended itself to the citizens of the infested counties. 

 It was carried into effect in the spring in such a way as either not to do all the good 

 of which it was capable, or to show that it was impossible to produce anything like 

 wholesale destruction, on a date specified beforehand, by this means. In other counties 

 meetings were held by townships to provide for plowing up roadsides and other public 

 places where eggs had been laid. In general a large amount of plowing and harrow- 

 ing and dragging of fields and new breaking was done by the farmers in all parts of 

 the threatened district. The reports of the results of this latter method of destruc- 

 tion are conflicting, varying according to the care expended upon the work, the late- 

 ness of the season at which it was.done, and the accuracy with which the results 

 were noticed. In cases where new breaking thickly filled with eggs was passed over 

 once or twice with a seeder in November, or late in October, a portion of the eggs 

 were left undestroyed, aud these hatching in the spring, the young devoured the grain 

 as fast as it grew. In other cases eggs brought to the surface late in the fall retained 

 their vitality (the young were fully formed iu the egf*;) during the winter, but after- 

 ward when they had been exposed, in February aud March, to alternate heat and cold 

 without a covering of snow, only a small fraction of them could be hatched. In other 

 cases, where the number of eggs was not excessive, the proportion of eggs left unde- 

 stroyed after fall harrowing was too small to cause (of themselves) any serious dam- 

 age in the spring. From all the inquiries that I have been able to make during the 

 season, I am confirmed in the statement made last year, that it is desirable to bring the 

 eggs to the surface at the earliest possible moment after there is any assurance that 

 the laying season is over; in other words, they should be exposed to the sun while 

 their contents are still fluid. 



The good effects of plowing the eggs under deeply are still more marked, wherever 

 the work was thoroughly done. Even when turned under to a depth of five or Jrix 

 inches the hatching, except in most favorable positions, was, if it occurred at all, too 

 late to do any injury whatever. Eggs plowed under in corn-land were found to be 

 unhatched up to the 21st of June, but when brought to the surface they hatched at 

 once ; and without any question large numbers of eggs turned under in heavy grounds 

 never hatch at all. At any rate it ought to be learned from the present year that with 



