304 B. N. A. BOUNDARY COMMISSION. 

hemp have already been cultivated with success in the Red River 
country, in former years, the Hudson’s Bay Company granting a small 
bounty for their production. Their growth was discontinued chiefly, it 
would seem, from the want of proper milling facilities.* The natural 
limit of agricultural settlement to the west, renders it certain, that as 
the eastern regions are more exclusively taken up for this purpose, the 
western plains, unfit for other use, will become more valuable as pastoral 
lands. 
716. The inroads of the western devasiating grasshopper, or locust, 
must be counted among the greatest discouragements to the settler, and 
in some of the newly occupied Western States have caused actual ruin 
and famine. The grasshoppers forming destructive swarms in the region 
of the plains east of the Rocky Mountains, appear to belong to a single 
species, which has been called Caloptenus spretus. This insect much re- 
sembles the Caloptenus femur-rubrum, or red-legged grasshopper, which in 
exceptional years has been destructive to crops in various parts of the 
Eastern States.f Spretus differs, however, from femur-rubrum specitic- 
ally, and can not only be distinguished from it in form, but possesses to a 
far higher degree the instinct and power of migration; circumstances 
suiting it to the almost boundless plains which it inhabits. It is not here 
intended, however, to enter into a zoological description of the insect, for 
which Prof. Thomas’ Synopsis of the Acridide ; or the Seventh Annual 
Report on the Insects of Missouri, by Mr. C. V. Riley, may be referred to, 
717. The locusts are not natives of the eastern region of the plains, 
where their devastations are most severely felt. They come from the far 
west as a winged swarm, and where they happen to be when they are 
mature, their eggs are deposited. From these eggs, in the ensuing spring, 
the young come forth, and cause often more complete destruction of crops 
than the winged adults ; for they attack the young grain, eating it down 
as fast as it grows. The young so produced, however, appear not to have 
so much vitality as those coming fresh from the west. A great part of 
them may reach maturity and migrate some distance, but their progeny 
in the third season seems rarely to give much trouble. 
718. The real home and permanent source of supply of the locusts, 
has been a question giving rise to considerable discussion. Mr. Walsh 
and others have supported the theory that they come from the alpine 
*Prof. Hind, Assineboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition. 
t See 8. H, Scudder in Hayden's Final Report on Nebraska, p. 252: also, Harris’ Insects Injurious to 
Vegetation, p. 165, 
