APPLE TV;iGS, LOCUST — FOOD OF THE LARVA. 43 



sects, but the past year they came from the ground among such 

 trees as abundantly as in the original timber lands. It has been 

 commonly supposed heretofore that the larvse derive their nourish- 

 ment from the roots of the trees upon which the eggs were de- 

 posited, puncturing the bark with their beaks and extracting the 

 juices, and in this way it has 'been supposed that much greater 

 injury was done to the trees than by the wounds made upon the 

 twigs by the perfect insects. This view has been sustained by 

 Miss Margaretta H. Morris, in an interesting communication to 

 the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and publisned also 

 in Downlng's Horticulturist (vol. ii. p. 16j,in which she attributes 

 the failure of pear and other fruit trees, in many cases, to the 

 exhaustion of the sap, produced by these larpte fixing themselves 

 upon the roots. On examining a pear tree which had ceased to 

 thrive, she found that all those roots which were six inches or 

 more beneath the surface were thronged with countless numbers 

 of the larvEe, clinging to them by means of their beaks inserted 

 in the bark. From (7ne root, a yard in length and about an inch 

 in diameter, she gathered twenty-three larvee, varying m length 

 from a quarter of an inch to an inch— a much greater disparity in 

 size than could have been anticipated in larvee which were all of 

 the same age. 



The habits and nourishment of these larvffi is a topic which 

 needs further investigation. Mr. R. W. Kennicott, of West 

 Northfield, Illinois, writes me that in the month of November in 

 following down the roots of several frees and shrubs, the twigs of 

 which were badly cut to pieces by the locusts last year, to the 

 distance of a foot or more, he was unable to find a single one of 

 these grubs, a strong indication that when young they descend 

 deeper than Miss Morris supposes. And a more important fact 

 is, that they subsist upon the roots of grass and herbs as well as 

 those of trees. I learn from Dr. J. W. Moody that at Spring 

 Arbor, Jackson county, Michigan, in fields which had been 

 cleared of their timber some sixteen years, and which have been 

 under cultivation most of the time since, the locusts came furth 

 last June as plentifully as in the timber land; and these seemed 

 to have been equally as well nourished, for they were of the same 



