Chronological History. 



41 



Detailed accounts of this invasion, and of the destitution 

 and suffering which resulted therefrom in the different 

 States, will be found in the author's Seventh Annual 

 Report on the Insects of Missouri. In that Report, in 

 endeavoring to forecast the probable injury the following 

 spring, in Missouri and adjoining country, I wrote as 

 follows : 



Setting aside possible but not probable injury from a new inva- 

 sion, we may consider the probable injury that will result in 1875, 

 from the progeny of those which came in 1874. The eggs which 

 are deposited on southerly hill-sides often hatch before cold weather 

 sets in, if the fall be warm and protracted, while manv hatch soon 

 after the frost is out of the ground in the spring. Yet the great 

 bulk of them will not hatch till into April. That most of the eggs 

 will hatch may be taken for granted unless we have very abnormal 

 climatic conditions, and unprecedentedly wet and cold weather 

 following a mild and thawing spell. The young issuing from 

 these eggs will, also, in all probability, do much damage, as they 

 did in the spring and summer of 1867. But the actual damage 

 can not be foretold, as so much depends on circumstances. In 1867, 

 in many counties of Kansas and Missouri, where the ground had 

 been filled with eggs the previous fall, little harm was done in the 

 spring — so small a percentage of the eggs came to anything and so 

 unmercifully were the young destroyed by natural enemies. A 

 severe frost kills the young after they have hatched, where a mod- 

 €rate frost does not affect them. * * * Following a rather 

 mild February the March of '67 was a very severe one, the ther- 

 mometer frequently indicatingr 18 degrees below zero, and accord- 

 ing to Mr. W. F. Goble, of Pleasant Ridge, Kansas, who wrote an 

 excellent account of the insect, this severe weather caused many 

 of the eggs to perish ; and he expresses the opinion that "judging 

 from the voraciousness of those that did appear, I doubt not Kansas 

 would have been made a perfect desert if all had lived. " 



If after the young hoppers hatch we have much cold wet 

 weather, great numbers of them will congregate in sheltered places 

 and perish before doing serious harm ; but if, on the contrary, our 

 spring and early summer prove dry and hot (which is hardly to be 

 expected after the several dry seasons lately experienced) much 

 damage will result from these young locusts, where no effort is 

 made to prevent it. They will ruin most garden truck, do much 

 injury to gram, and affect plants very much in the order previously 

 indicated under the head of "Food-plants." They will become 

 more and more injurious as they get older, until, in about two 

 months from the time of hatching, or about the middle of June, 

 they will begin to acquire wings, become restless, and in all proba- 

 bility leave the locality where they were born, either wending 

 their way further south or returning in the direction whence their 



