AGRICULTURE. 89 



been recorded of these plagues, it is astonishing how little really 

 reliable knowledge can be acquired. 



Whether it be that because in most civilized countries the evil 

 has generally been transient, with sufficient interspaces of time 

 between the inflictions to allay anxiety, or whether their over- 

 whelming magnitude paralyzed for a time the energies of their 

 victims, cannot now be known: but certain it is that concentra- 

 tion and alertness of intelligence, the rigorous methods by which 

 .science in later time has penetrated the secrets of nature, has until 

 recently been almost wholly wanting. 



As a consequence, the history of the locust in times past ap- 

 pears to have been addressed to the imagination rather than to the 

 understandings of men; abounding in marvelous narrative designed 

 rather to inspire wonder than to convey valuable information. 



We read how their invading armies have overshadowed the laud 

 and darkened the sun at noonday: how famine and pestilence fol- 

 lowed in their rear, and much of like terror. It is scarcely nec- 

 essary for a Minnesotian to consult the prophet Joel, or Exodus, or 

 the high wrought imagery of the oriental writers, to acquire a 

 realizing sense of what a locust invasion is. A visit to the west- 

 ern part of this State, during the past summer, would have been 

 the better plan. 



Not, then, with any purpose of regaling the reader with men- 

 tally-debauching marvels, but to get at the when, where and how 

 he lias visited and afflicted other countries. I propose to make a 

 short and necessarily imperfect study of his past doings in the 

 Eastern Hemisphere of the world, as perchance his haunt and 

 habits there may tbrow some light on questions now up for solu- 

 tion by us. 



The wide area over which locusts have been diffused at various 

 periods and in all quarters of the globe, is a very remarkable fact, 

 and one, perhaps, not generally known. In the United States, it 

 might be said that their existence, as a serious evil, was practically 

 unknown until we began our explorations and settlements on the 

 PaCitlc coast. Hut. by closer examination, we find that at one 

 time or another, they have overspread all the western portion of 

 North America, from the British Possessions to the Isthmus of 

 Panama. A catalogue of the places they have ravaged would in- 

 clude the names of every state and territory west of the Mississippi 

 river, tbe western half of .Mexico, ami all the states of Central 

 America. In the continent of South America, the situation has 

 been substantially the same. 



Africa, from time immemorial, seems to have been a peculiar and 

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