tv) where the large grass had been eaten to the bare stalks, and our animals 

 fared badly. 



" In 1805, I visited a camp of Dakota scouts, near the " Hole in the 

 Mountain," at the head of the Redwood. That was in the month of Au- 

 gust. The valley of the Minnesota clear out to the Coteau was so full of 

 grasshoppers as to make it unpleasant traveling. For the next four years, 

 I traveled every summer on the Missouri River, coming over to and from 

 Minnesota. Every season I met with grasshoppers at some point on the 

 east side of the Missouri. In 18«7, and also in 18G8, we found them near 

 Fort Randall. In 1869, iu August, we met them above Fort Sully, near 

 Grand River. In all these cases, they were only in small battalions, and 

 appeared to have come there from other parts." 



Again, in 1871, slight and scattering swarms of locusts appeared 

 in Stearns, Todd, Douglas, Pope, Otter Tail, Becker and Polk 

 counties, and perhaps in others. In all these counties they were 

 in sufficient numbers to make themselves noticeable, and in some 

 cases crops were injured, or a few eggs laid; but the occurrence 

 would have been mostly forgotten by this time if they had not. 

 been brought to mind by more recent events. 



The invasion of 1873 was something unusual in its eharacter 

 from the earliness of its arrival, the direction from which it came, 

 and from the fact that it was the beginning of a visitation which 

 has been prolonged to the present time by what, judging from 

 former years, would appear to be unusual circumstances. Each 

 summer since 1873, instead of being the scene of a general de- 

 parture of the hatching swarms as in former years, has seen 

 portions of those swarms alighting but a few miles from where 

 they were hatched, (generally in the next range of counties, and 

 sometimes in other parts of the same county,) and depositing eggs 

 for another brood. In addition to these, new swarms coming in 

 from the northwest in 1871 and again in 1876, have added great Ly 

 t ) the area of devastation in both these years, and iu the latter 

 year to the area of egg-deposit, so that the prospect of destruction 

 to the crops in 1877 is greater and surer than ever. 



MINNESOTA AS A BREEDING GROUND OF THE LOCUST. 



Without saying anything for the present about the new coining 

 swarms, the history of those that have bred inside the State since 

 1873 has been as follows: They reached the southwestern comer 

 of the state about the first of June, 1873, brought by a wind that 

 had been blowing freshly from the southwest for several days. 

 During June and July, they spread themselves over the whole or 

 portions of fourteen different counties, lying adjacent to each 

 2 



