11 



DEGENERATION. 



So much lias been said of late years of the tendency of the 

 migratory locust to "degenerate" in the more easterly and south- 

 erly portion of the area visited by it, and this theory has been 

 considered by our people so complete a failure, that it is worth 

 while to state exactly what the theory is, and how truly it applies 

 to our state. It might have been submitted at the start that 

 opinions based upon a consideration of events still occurring, and 

 more or less liable to be modified by new circumstances, should 

 not be pressed too far nor too literally; and it was just that in 

 judging as to the correctness of these opinions, that they should 

 have been fairly stated. I give them in the briefest form in which 

 1 find thenr. "There is nothing more certain than that the 

 .insect is not autochthonous in West Missouri, Kansas, Ne- 

 braska, Towa, or even Minnesota, and that when forced to migrate 

 from its native home, from the causes already mentioned, it no 

 longer thrives in this country.'" (Riley's seventh annual report,, 

 p. 165.) It will be noticed that Dakota and Colorado are not 

 included in this list; that Minnesota is to some extent excepted, 

 and that, though not directly stated in the sentence quoted, the 

 application is to swarms breeding one year after another in the 

 regions mentioned, and not to such fierce hordes as have swept 

 down upon us from the northwest in the summers of 1874 and 

 1876. The discouraging events of th« last four years have served 

 to confuse the question, and it is no wonder that our farmers, 

 seeing the considerable numbers that have remained to breed here 

 from one year to another, with the intolerable numbers that have 

 been added in two out of four seasons, should come to believe 

 that Providence has given over one half of our state to be hence- 

 forth the perpetual home of the locust. We have a series of 

 occurrences so different from those of Missouri, Kansas and Ne- 

 braska, that it seems hard to account for them on any basis of 

 mere accident or of which way the Wind happens to blow when 

 our swarms are ready to migrate. 



The winds which sweep clean away the hatching swarms of the 

 more southern states carry our oavii but a few miles from their 

 birth place. It is evident that they are not detained here merely 

 by abundance of food, for the swarms of Kansas and Missouri 

 leave behind them fields as rich as ours; nor by force of winds, for 

 the same winds that bring down upon us invaders born hundreds 

 of miles away, and carry them across our state and into more 

 southerly regions, might also carry with them the broods of our 



