minished during the summer, that the injury would, for the pres- 

 ent, end with the flying season. Under these circumstances, it 

 seemed best to make such additions and corrections to the Report 

 of the Grasshopper Commission of 1875, as the experience of the 

 present year should furnish. But as the season has advanced, and 

 events have multiplied themselves, the subject has assumed, both 

 in extent and urgency, anew and continued importance. Follow- 

 ing close upon the attack of 1874, we have a new locust invasion, 

 surpassing all former' ones in the amount of territory visited, in 

 the magnitude of the invading swarms, in their repeated comings, 

 and in the length of their combined stay. Tn addition to the losses 

 inflicted upon the crops during the last four summers, amounting 

 to at least eight millions of dollars, we find the evil still confront- 

 ing us as in 1873, and while we have gained something by our four 

 years' experience, we have also lost something by the dishearten- 

 ment which four successive years of damage necessarily bring. To 

 meet in any such report as this the demands of a subject so exten- 

 sive and important, or the expectations of the large number of 

 people who are so deeply interested in it would be simply an im- 

 possibility, but I should be glad if anything contained in it could 

 add to the knowledge necessary for intelligent action, or to the 

 hopefulness which we may reasonably entertain in regard to the 

 locust problem in the long run. Such as it is, the report is the 

 result of several visits to the southwestern counties during the 

 spring and summer, of replies to circulars sent to nearly every in- 

 fested town in the state, and of a large amount of correspondence 

 addressed freely to various points in Minnesota, Dakota, and else- 

 where. To compile such information as could be collected from 

 all these, and from hundreds of items published in our state papers 

 during the summer, has been a work of a good deal of time and 

 trouble. The practical value of the results of work of this kind 

 seldom corresponds to the amount of trouble incurred, but this is 

 simply the fault of the subject. 



GENERAL VIEWS ON* LOCUST INVASION'S. 



Taking into consideration the whole cultivated region, from 

 Manitoba to Texas and from the Rocky Mountains to .the Missis- 

 sippi, there have been in the series of thirteen years from 1864 to 

 1876, but four, (or at most five) years when some portion of this 

 area was not attacked by locusts, coming in from somewhere out- 

 side of the cultivated area. Tn other words there have been no 

 less than nine locust invasions, (differing much in extent and 



