38 



21st, 77 bushels; Juno 22d, 68 bushels; June 23d, 45 bushel a ; 

 June 24th, 71 bushels ; June 26th to 28th, 128 bushels ; June 

 29th, 59 bushels ■ June 30th, 28 bushels ; July 1st, 18 bushels, 

 when the work w;is discontinued, as the locusts had begun to fly, 

 and had become too scattered to be caught easily. The catching 

 was done along the edge of the field, and between the hours of five 

 and ten P. m. It required the labor of four men and four horses 

 during these hours. The whole number of bushels caught was 

 667, and, on threshing, 658 bushels of wheat were harvested from 

 the fifty acres. 



ditching. 



The experience of Minnesota in regard to ditching, in 1875, was 

 so successful, and so strongly and fully confirmed by the testimony 

 of reliable men, that the experiment should have seemed worthy 

 of a more extended trial than it has received this year. But few 

 ditches have been dug, but these, even when left to take care of 

 themselves, have generally served as a barrier during the earlier 

 half of the season. A ditch, to be effectual, needs care and watch, 

 ing ; when its sides have been washed down by repeated rains, and 

 it becomes a mere curved surface, it is a very slight barrier indeed. 

 The time and trouble of constructing such ditches as these, would 

 be spent better otherwise. 



CONTENDING WITH WINGKI) LOCUSTS. 



Here and there during the past season have been cases of one 

 farmer or a few farmers in a township who were able to save some 

 portion of their crops from the flying swarms. The number of 

 cases where this has happened is in some twenty-five or thirty out 

 of the whole number of towns in the state that have been invaded. 

 When there has been any success at all it has generally been early 

 in the season, and over small patches of garden or cornfields. 

 There are towns where farmers have smudged, roped, discharged 

 fire-arms, and rattled tin pans, until straw stacks and patience 

 were exhausted; and all to no avail. Others have worked hard 

 smoking and roping their fields, supposing all the while that they 

 were accomplishing something, only to find in the end that they 

 were worse off than neighbors who had done nothing. Others, 

 who have had plenty of straw at hand, have, by firing it at just 

 the right moment, managed to save a field. Hut the uselessness 



