Rome, and Range East of Mountains. 57 



in the early part of July, so that not a green thing is to be 

 found. Our Rocky Mountain Locust, therefore, hatching 

 out in untold myriads in the hot plains, five or six thou- 

 sand feet above the sea level, will often perish in immense 

 numbers if the scant vegetation of its native home dries 

 up before it acquires wings; but if the season is propitious 

 and the insect becomes fledged before its food supply is 

 exhausted, the newly acquired wings prove its salvation. 

 It may also become periodically so prodigiously multiplied 

 in its native breeding places that, even in favorable 

 seasons, everything green is devoured by the time it be- 

 comes winged. 



In either case, prompted by that most exigent law of 

 hunger — spurred on for very life — it rises in immense 

 clouds in the air to seek for fresh pastures where it may 

 stay its ravenous appetite. Borne along by the prevailing 

 winds that sweep over these immense treeless plains from 

 the northwest, often at the rate of fifty or sixty miles an 

 hour, the darkening locust clouds are soon carried into the 

 more moist and fertile country to the southeast, where with 

 sharpened appetites, they fall upon the crops like a plague 

 and a blight. Many of the more feeble or of the more 

 recently fledged perish, no doubt, on the way ; but the 

 main army succeeds, with favorable wind, in bridging over 

 the parched country which offers no nourishment. The 

 hotter and drier the season, and the greater the extent of 

 the drouth, the earlier will they be prompted to migrate, 

 and the farther will they push on to the east and south. 



My late friend, Benj. D. Walsh, was of the opinion that 

 the swarms which pour down upon the Mississippi Valley 

 come from the mountain regions of Colorado. My own 

 belief, first announced in 18 74, that they originate in the 

 Northwest, has been very strongly confirmed by subsequent 

 events ; and however much some of the Western States 



