APPENDIX IX. NARRATIVE OF PACKARD'S FIRST JOURNEY. [135] 



a general southerly direction, and falling into the irrigating ditches. A soiall red 

 wasp (Larrada semirufa) was busy killing the young; several were seen. I was told 

 that in places northwest of Greeley the yo.ung are quite common. In the streets of 

 the town I found a number of pupae of C. spretm in the second stage. 



June 6. — At Cheyenne no young locusts were observed, and Mr. A. C. Dobbin, the 

 United States weather signal observer, informed me that none had been seen this 

 spring. At Sherman (8,240 feet elevation) the thermometer was 56° F., and large 

 snow banks lay near the railroad track. Two station-men tell me that no locusts 

 breed here, as the peculiarly gravelly soil is too coarse for them to deposit their eggs, 

 though locusts are seen passing over. No young locusts were seen by mo between 

 Sherman and Laramie City. At this place the thermometer stood at 62°. I was told 

 that no locusts had been seen here since 1874, and that few, if any, breed here. The 

 impression gains ground with me that the Rocky Mountain locusts breed rather in 

 the warm, grassy valleys and river bottoms than the elevated plains proper, and that 

 consequently in their flights they seek valleys and sunny slopes overlooking the valleys 

 rather than the dry, elevated plains. 



June 8.— Spent the day at Farmington, Utah, on the edge of the Great Salt Lake, 

 where the yonng locusts were very abundant on the edge of a field of lucerne and on 

 the edge of a field of wheat. Some had very recently hatched and seemed not to have 

 molted; others were in the second larval stage ; most, however, were in the third larval 

 stage, but only one or two were in the first jjupal stage. Mr. Haight, the owner of the 

 farm, says the eggs were laid the last of September, 1876, in the field of lucerne ; they 

 came from due north, the wind being due north. The eggs hatched mostly May 1 ; a 

 few in the middle of March, but they died, owing to the heavy spring rains. As in 

 Colorado, few were seen away from the edges of the cultivated fields. In some places 

 from twenty-five to seventy-five could be counted on a single square foot of ground in 

 the beaten roadside between the field oE lucerne and wheat. Toads were very thick 

 and evidently were feeding on the young, though I made no direct observations in 

 proof of this. The red- winged and sooty blackbird were also common among them. 



June 9. — At Lake Point, 20 miles west of Salt Lake City, young sjyretus were seen, 

 though very rarely, on the lower benches about the shores of the lake. Mr. A. L. 

 Siler, of Ranch, a settlement situated 27 miles from the southern border of the Terri- 

 tory, teUs me that none have been seen by him this year sonth of Salt Lake. He 

 says that a fall of four or five inches of snow, if it does not lie on the ground more 

 than two day^, does not injure the yonng locusts in Southern Utah. He says that 

 many are destroyed by parasites ; that a black wasp attacked them. In selecting its 

 breeding-grounds, the locust, he says, is very intelligent, selecting favorite, warm, and 

 sunny breeding-sites. Those eggs laid in the southern exposures hatch two or three 

 weeks earlier than those on the northern, but aU arrive at maturity about the same 

 time, and ordinary rains do not afiect them materially. The progeny of those that 

 come from the north for two years in succession flew in a northerly direction. Should 

 these observations be substantiated by others, there may occur in certain years in 

 Utah a northern return migration, much as in Texas and the Mississippi Valley north- 

 ward to latitude 40°. 



In Southern Utah they harvest the wheat from June 20 to July 20, when the locust 

 arrive, too late, however, to do serious damage to the wheat crop. After the wheat is 

 harvested, the farmers living beyond the rim of the Great Basin, raise a crop of com. 

 This is sometimes devoured by the newly arrived locusts, which eat the blades, silk, and 

 ears. Pease are the last vegetable they eat. In 1869 he observed them defoliating apple- 

 trees, eating first the tender leaves and then the older, tougher ones ; they would eat 

 either whole peaches, leaving only the stone, or eat half a peach, leaving the other half 

 as smooth as if cut with a knife. 



Mr. John L. Barfoot, custodian of the Salt Lake Museum, who has taken great pains 

 to assist the Commission, tells me that the locust in 1876 was common in Salt Lake 

 City and on the bench or old lake terrace back of the city, and laid their eggs iu 

 the trodden compact soil, rather than loose plowed land. The locusts, he says, prefer 

 onions to any other crop ; lucerne and young sorghum next. In Utah they do not use 

 coal-oil in their ditches, but have used tarpaulins daubed with coal-tar. 



June 11. — Went from Salt Lake City to Franklin, Idaho Territory, over the Utah North- 

 em railroad, whick runs up Cache Valley, the "granary of Utah." Young locusts were 

 very common at Ogden. Ten or fifteen miles above Ogden, the women were seen fight- 

 ing grasshoppers with cloths and bags, waving them and thus driving the locusts from 

 the borders of the fields of grain. Were coal-oil used in the wet ditches as in Colorado, 

 much labor and money would be saved and the locusts more effectually destroyed. 



Winged locusts were observed about 20 miles above Ogden flying southeasterly, the 

 wind being light and northwest in its course. At Brigham I was told that winged lo- 

 custs first appeared June 4, and at Franklin June 3. The bodies were soft, and the 

 locusts had evidently just molted. In some places a third of the wheat crop had been 

 devoured by the young. At one point I saw the young (pupae) either Aval king or hop- 

 ping in a southerly course. At Hampton, a good many were seen flying down the val- 



