[6] REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



perature at Saint Paul for the month of February was 32° above zero, being nearly 

 15^ warmer than February, 1876, and more thau 33° warmer than February, 187o. 

 The months of March and April did not differ greatly from the same months in pre- 

 ceding years, and the thermometrical records show that the eggs have been subjected 

 to alternate freezings and thawings every year. Thus in March, lfc74, while the mer- 

 cury rose above the freezing jjoint on sixteen days, it ranged from 45° to 5° above 

 zero, and fell on the 3d of April to 17° below zero. Again, in 1675, the mercury in 

 March ranged from 38° to 1° above zero, and in April from 70° to 10° above zero. In 

 March, 1877, the mercury rose above the freezing-point on eighteen days, and ranged 

 from 45° to 50° above zero, while in April it hardly reached the freezing-x^oint after 

 the ^d day of the month. The transition from the hope excited in February to the 

 reality of the hatching under the warm sun of May was a violent one. In their despair 

 at seeing their fields hopelessly mowed down day after day, many " adapted their rec- 

 ollections to what they were then suffering," and proclaimed, by repeated statements, 

 that the coming hatch would prove a failure. They had been misled into sowing a, 

 larger acreage than they would otherwise have sown. It was easy at that time to say 

 that all writing upon the locust, and hence all entomological writing, was worse than 

 useless. It may be said, on the other hand, that if farmers were misled in this matter 

 they simply misled themselves, and that no statement was made on the subject of 

 hatching by any one who had any better means of deciding the question than each 

 man had in his own fields. Statements were made repeatedly in the country newspa- 

 pers, in March and April, that attempts to hatch the eggs artificially had proved a fail- 

 ure, but there were just as many going to show that the eggs had not lost their vital- 

 ity at all. Moreover, if there were any delusion in the matter, farmers in a large 

 number of counties may rightfully .claim that they were misled into a fear of sowing 

 what would have proved the most successful wheat crop they have ever known. 



DATES or HATCHIXG. 



Every year since the advent of the locusts in 1873 there have been reports of a cer- 

 tain amount of hatching in the fall. There is no point in the whole subject upon 

 which there are more contradictory reports, and perhaps none on which observers are 

 more likely to be misled. I have found the young of femur-rubrum quite thick in the 

 last week of August, and of species of Trarjocepliala ajid Sienototlirus as late as the first 

 week of October, but these latter never in large numbers. But reports, received from 

 reliable sources, of locusts hatching numerously in September on the very spots where 

 e^'gs had been laid by spretus early in the summer make it j)robable that a certain 

 amount of hatching occurs in the fall. But I have never seen a fully-winged sjjreUis 

 so early in the spring as to make it necessary to suppose that it had survived the win- 

 ter. 



The earliest notice of hatching in the present year (whatever the species may have 

 been) is to be found in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press : " Messrs. Hendryx and Newton, 

 of the Farmers' Union, yesterday received a package of lively young grasshoppers, 

 about half an inch long and evidently filled with an ambition to be a good deal longer. 

 They were sent in by a farmer named Burch, residing at Yicksburg, Renville County. 

 He writes under date of February 1, 'They are samples of our grasshoppers found 

 this day, some on bluffs and some in the meadows.' He states that there had been at 

 that date four warm days, and that, with the exception of occasional snow-drifts, the 

 ground was then bare, and there were quite a number of those little hoppers, fully 

 half an inch long, crawling about and impatiently waiting for the farmers to put in 

 their seed." Similarly, the young were found in Nicollet, Blue Earth, Watonwan, and 

 Yellow Medicine Counties during the month of February, generally al30ut stony heaps 

 of earth or on sandy bluffs. Specimens of these were received in February, and proved 

 to belong to Stenoh'othrus and Tragocepliala. The latter acquired wings during the first 

 week in March. It is probable that all the yonng which appeared in February were 

 native species, either just hatched or coming forth after hibernation; but all this was 

 suspended during the cold weather in March. 



Early in April (by the 10th) young locusts began to appear again in some of the 

 southern counties, and by the 20th of the month considerable numbers had hatched 

 out, particularly upon the blufts along the Minnesota River between New Ulm and 

 Saint Peter. The cold, cloudy weather, and the heavy snov>' which followed a week 

 later, may have destroyed most of them ; it is diflicult to tell, as the young locust hides 

 itself in such weather in crevices in the earth, among the roots and tufts of grass, and 

 in everything on or near the earth that offers protection from the cold, and a day of 

 warm sunlight brings them forth from unseen hiding-places in si^ots where they had 

 before disappeared. Similarly, in 1875, both in northern and in southern counties, a 

 large proportion of the early hatch of April disappeared after cold rains, and were 

 perhaps destroyed. But if any were destroyed by the cold, above mentioned, it was 

 1)ut an insignilicant portion of the whole number hatched during the season. If any 

 favorable intervention of weather or temperature is to be sought for, it will be found 

 not in a snow-storm at the end of April, which perhaps destroyed a comparatively 



