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have reached, in some form or other, the hands of every reading 

 man in Minnesota. The report of the commission appointed by 

 Governor C. K. Davis in 1875, (of which some 5,000 copies were 

 printed,) the proclamation of Governor J. S. Pillsbury, issued 

 August 30th, 1876, containing the gist of all the known methods 

 of locust warfare, and the many and oftentimes excellent amplifi- 

 cations and details of these methods, as they have appeared in the 

 state newspapers during the summer, cover the whole ground so 

 far as it is known. Finally the Report of the Proceedings of the 

 Omaha Convention repeat, in twelve excellent pages, the whole 

 subject once more, and a reprint of these in the newspapers of 

 those counties where the evil is new and comparatively unknown, 

 ought to leave no further lack of information. 



It ought also to be understood that these sources contain all 

 that has so far been made public on the subject, and that the 

 farmer must for the present defend his crops by these means or 

 not at all. We are so accustomed to the comprehensive methods 

 of farming by machinery that it is hard for us to come down to 

 the petty exercise of individual exertion which the European 

 peasant would consider only ;i regular portion of his daily exist- 

 ence. But whatever may be the success of various machines and 

 applications which are now in preparation, but not to be disclosed 

 at present, there is as yet no labor-saving contrivance, capable of 

 being applied over large areas, which can accomplish anything 

 like a universal destruction of the young locust, and the general 

 law of labor holds good, that a man's success is measured by the 

 earnestness of his own endeavor. Even the difficulty which 

 results from sparseness of population may be overcome in some 

 little measure; where a few farmers in a township where eggs are 

 laid have determined to sow a small acreage and to defend it to the 

 best of their abilities, something may be gained by combining and 

 sowing in partnership, or side by side, the fields that would other- 

 wise be distributed over a township. Of course there are objec- 

 tions and difficulties to any such method of proceeding, but they 

 are at least no greater than those already presented in the mere- 

 fact that the locust is present. On the other hand the advantages 

 would be great ; half a dozen families acting in concert and in 

 the defense of one large field would accomplish far more than by 

 any disjointed efforts ; it would be far easier to defend the four 

 sides of one large field than the twenty-four sides of half a dozen 

 smaller ones ; and lastly the single field would have a smaller 

 n umber of locusts in the aggregate to contend against, and insects 

 hatched at a distance from it might never reach it before flying; 

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