THE GRASSHOPPER 



morrow comes, and, ah! what a change it brings! The fertile land of 

 promise and plenty has become a desolate waste, and old Sol, even at 

 his brightest, shines sadlv through an atmosphere alive with myriads 

 of glittering insects. 



Even today the farmers of the Middle Western States 

 are often hard put to it to harvest crops, especially alfalfa 

 and grasses, from fields that are teeming with hungry 

 grasshoppers. By two means, principally, they seek relief 

 from the devouring hordes. One method is that of driv- 

 ing across the fields a device known as a "hopperdozer," 

 which collects the insects bodily and destroys them. The 

 dozer consists essentially of a long shallow pan, twelve or 

 fifteen feet in length, set on low runners and provided with 

 a high back made either of metal or of cloth stretched over 

 a wooden frame. The pan contains water with a thin 

 film of kerosene over it. As the dozer is driven over the 

 field, great numbers of the grasshoppers that fly up before it 

 either land directly in the pan or fall into it after striking 

 the back, and the kerosene film on the water does the rest, 

 for kerosene even in very small quantity is fatal to the 

 insects. In this manner, many bushels of dead locusts 

 are taken often from each acre of an alfalfa field; but still 

 great numbers of them escape, and the dozer naturally 

 can not be used on rough or uneven ground, in pastures, 

 or in fields with standing crops. A more generally effec- 

 tive method of killing the pests is that of poisoning them. 

 A mixture is prepared of bran, arsenic, cheap molasses, and 

 water, sufficiently moist to adhere in small lumps, with 

 usually some substance added which is supposed to make 

 the "mash" more attractive to the insects. The deadly 

 bait is then finely broadcast over the infested fields. 



While such methods of destruction are effective, they 

 bear the crude and commonplace stamp of human ways. 

 See how the thing is done when insect contends against 

 insect. A fly, not an ordinary fly, but one known to 

 entomologists as Sarcophaga kellyi (Fig. 10), being 

 named after Dr. E. O. G. Kelly, who has given us a 



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