Introduction. 



11 



features — the Northwest origin, the return migra- 

 tion from the Southeast country (which implies 

 only temporary injury therein), and the Eastern 

 limit — maybe stated as laws governing the insect 

 east of the Rocky Mountains. They were first fully 

 propounded by the writer, and will, he believes, be 

 fully established and confirmed by future events. 

 Their general truth is a guarantee to the people of 

 the Mississippi Yalley against continued injury from 

 locust ravages, and should banish from the minds of 

 the farmers east of the great " Father of Waters," 

 the fear of being visited by the disastrous locust 

 armies. 



One other point is, also, made clear in the follow- 

 ing pages, viz., that in the more thickly settled parts 

 of the country subject to visitation, man has the 

 power to utterly rout, by practical and feasible 

 means, the young or unfledged insects. Indeed, 

 when our people become familiar with the locust 

 plague in all its phases, it will cease to be such a 

 bugbear. There is no part of the country that is 

 not subject to meteorological or entomological 

 excesses, and in the long run the Rocky Mountain 

 Locust is not more injurious in the country which 

 it occasionally visits, than are some of the farmer' s 

 insect foes, in other parts of the country. When 

 we think of the famine and utter destitutipn that at 



