210 The Rocky Mountain Locust. 



Mountain Locust are due to the practice of burning off 

 the dry grass of our Western prairies. All the arguments 

 in this direction, however plausible at first sight, will not 

 bear the test of close scrutiny. The theory is that burning 

 the grass is the occasion of drouth, and that locusts come 

 only in drouthy seasons. One writer in the Kansas Farmer 

 for Sept. 23d, 1874, even asserts that "the unbroken 

 succession of curses " that have afflicted that State, " all 

 spring from the one first grand cause, the burning of the 

 prairie grasses," and, after explaining that hot, scorching 

 winds and simoons originate in desert countries, he avers 

 that 44 it matters not whether the country is an original 

 desert, or whether it is made so by the action of our 

 Western prairie fires. For all present purposes the two 

 are reduced to a common level and produce a common 

 result — drouth, hot winds and locusts." 



The reason given why the locusts can come only in 

 drouthy seasons, is, that they can not fly in a moist 

 atmosphere, and the facts that they do not readily fly 

 early in the morning, and that the farther east you go, or, 

 in other words, the more moist the atmosphere becomes, 

 the insects diminish in number and consequent power for 

 harm. 



As such views are by no means uncommon in the West, 

 I will give my several reasons for believing that there is 

 no connection whatever between prairie fires and locust 

 ravages. 



1. It is by no means proved that the simoons which 

 occasionally sweep over our Western States and Territories 

 have their origin in any part of that vast prairie country. 

 Some of the more local of these hot, dry winds may origi- 

 nate or acquire their peculiarly high temperature on the 

 mauvaises terres of Wyoming or the table lands of Arizona 

 and Mexico; but the more general simoons most probably 



