170 OETHOPTEBA. 



miscalled grasshoppers, and have suffered more or less from 

 their depredations. 



Among the various accounts which I have seen, the follow- 

 ing, extracted from the Travels of the late President Dwight,* 

 seems to he the most full and circumstantial. " Bennington 

 (Vermont), and its neighborhood, have for some time past 

 been infested by grasshoppers (locusts) of a kind with which 

 I had before been wholly unacquainted. At least, their his- 

 tory, as given by respectable persons, is in a great measure 

 novel. They appear at different periods, in different years ; 

 but the time of their continuance seems to be the same. 

 This year (1798) they came four weeks earlier than in 1797, 

 and disappeared four weeks sooner. As I had no opportunity 

 of examining them, I cannot describe their form or their size. 

 Their favorite food is clover and maize. Of the latter they 

 devour the part which is called the silk, the immediate means 

 of fecundating the ear, and thus prevent the kernel from 

 coming to perfection. But their voracity extends to almost 

 every vegetable ; even to the tobacco plant and the burdock. 

 Nor are they confined to vegetables alone. The garments of 

 laborers, hung up in the field while they are at work, these 

 insects destroy in a few hours ; and with the same voracity 

 they devour the loose particles which the saw leaves upon 

 the surface of pine boards, and which, when separated, are 

 termed sawdust. The appearance of a board fence, from 

 which the particles had been eaten in this manner, and which 

 I saw, was novel and singular; and seemed the result, not 

 of the operations of the plane, but of attrition. At times, 

 particularly a little before their disappearance, they collect 

 in clouds, rise high in the atmosphere, and take extensive 

 flights, of which neither the cause nor the direction has 

 hitherto been discovered. I was authentically informed that 

 some persons, employed in raising the steeple of the church 

 in "Williamstown, were, while standing near the vane, cov- 

 ered by them, and saw, at the same time, vast swarms of 



* Travels in New England and New York, by Timothy Dwight, Vol. II. p. 403. 



