275 
THE WESTERN CRICKET IN UTAH IN THE FORTIES. 
Perhaps the earliest instance of damage to cultivated crops by the 
western cricket (Anabrus simplex Hald.) is that reported by the Hon. 
George Q. Cannon in a recent speech as temporary chairman of the 
third irrigation congress (Irrigation Age, 1894, p. 188). This account 
is also interesting from the complete destruction of the cricket in this 
instance by gulls. In describing the agricultural conditions in Utah in 
1848. Mr. Cannon states that the "black crickets came down by millions 
and destroyed our gram crops; promising fields of wheat in the morn- 
ing were by evening as smooth as a man's hand — devoured by the 
crickets/' At this juncture, he says, u Sea gulls came by hundreds 
and thousands, and before the crops were entirely destroyed these 
gulls devoured the insects so that our fields were entirely freed from 
them." * * * "I have been along the ditches in the morning,'' he 
adds, "and have seen lumps of these crickets vomited up by the gulls 
so that they could begin killing them again.'" 
The cricket here referred to will be remembered as the one that fre- 
quently travels in enormous hordes in the West, stopping at no obstacle, 
river or other, and is the one also, on the authority of Thomas, eaten 
by the Indians, either roasted or simply after the head and limbs have 
been removed. A recent account of damage by it is given in Insect 
Life (vol. vi, p. 17).* 
On the authority of Dr. A. K. Fisher, of this Department, the bird 
referred to above is undoubtedly Franklin's gull, ( Larus franklin!) which 
occurs in enormous flocks about the small fresh water lakes of the North- 
west, and feeds in great conrpanies on Orthoptera of all sorts. 
Mr. Vernon Bailey, in the Annual Report of the Ornithologist for 
1887, describes the feeding of large flocks on grasshoppers in Dakota, 
near Devils Lake, and Dr. Fisher says that this habit is frequently 
observed throughout the grasshopper and cricket regions. In this the 
gulls are assisted by certain hawks, the w r ork of the latter being noted 
also by Mr. Thomas in the report of his western journey of 1871. A 
flock of 500 Swainson's hawk (Buteo swainsoni) which is probably the 
species seen by Thomas and others, was observed feeding on Anabrus 
in Colorado by Mr. A. S. Bennett, and the stomach of one of the hawks 
shot at the time contained six of the insects.! — C. L. M. 
AN IMPORTANT SCALE INSECT ON COTTONWOOD. 
Mr. W. S. Connor, of East Atchison, Mo., has sent us a large and 
striking scale insect upon young cotton wood trees which is seriously 
damaging a very considerable plantation in his vicinity. The insect 
belongs to the genus Prosopophora and is a new species. It is, as 1 >ef< »re 
stated, very large and conspicuous, and clusters upon the trunks of 
^See also U. S. E. C, vol. ir 3 p. 163; Hud., vol. in, p. til. 
t Hawks and Owls of the United States, Fisher, p. 77. 
