170 Hie Rocky Mountain Locust. 



spring, after the young hatch, and before the new grass 

 gets too rank, might also be adopted. But whatever the 

 means employed, they must be carried on systematically, 

 and on a sufficiently extended and comprehensive scale. 



SUGGESTIONS THAT MAY BE OF SEEVICE. 



In addition to the foregoing remedial and preventive 

 measures to be taken in dealing with locusts, a few other 

 suggestions occur, which may be of advantage. The 

 plants that can be grown, which are unmolested by the 

 pests, and which will not, in all likelihood, suffer, have 

 already been enumerated. Those which are cultivated 

 are principally peas and other leguminous species, castor 

 beans, sorghum, broom-corn, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, 

 etc. The locusts, as already stated, are particularly fond 

 of tansy, cocklebur, and Amarantus : these weeds, where 

 abundant, might be periodically sprinkled with Paris 

 Green water or powder, so as to kill large numbers of the 

 young insects. These last will also congregate on timothy 

 in preference to other grasses or grain, and a strip of 

 timothy around a corn or wheat-field, to be poisoned in 

 the same way, might save the latter. It is also currently 

 supposed that the common larkspur {Delphinium) is 

 poisonous to these insects, but how much truth there is in 

 the statement I am unable to tell. In going through an 

 oat-field, the winged insects drop a great deal of the grain, 

 which, when ripe enough, might at once be harrowed in 

 so as to furnish a good growth of fodder that can be cut 

 and cured for winter use. The lesson of 1873 and 1874 

 should also not go unheeded. The former year was one 

 of plenty, and corn was so cheap and abundant that it 

 was burned for fuel in many sections where, in 1874, there 

 were empty cribs, and the farmers wished they had been 

 more provident. 



