DISTRIBUTION IN 1857 AND 1858. 



389 



ordinary swarms of locusts in Eupert's Land that I have 

 met with, assigns the last week of July, 1818, to this 

 event.* Every green herb in the settlements at Eed 

 Eiver is stated to have been destroyed by these destruc- 

 tive invaders. In 1819 the young brood hatched from 

 the eggs deposited in the preceding year appeared in the 

 spring and consumed the growing wheat crops. " Every 

 vegetable substance was either eaten up or stripped to the 

 bare stalk ; the leaves of bushes and the bark of trees 

 shared the same fate ; the grain vanished as fast as it 

 appeared above ground leaving no hope either of ' Seed 

 to the sower or bread to the eater.' " f 



Early in 1819 this pestilence disappeared, but in what 

 manner is not stated. 



In 1857 the locusts appeared in countless swarms over 

 a large part of North America. They destroyed nearly 

 all the vegetables cultivated at Fort Eandall, long. 98° 35', 

 lat. 43° 4', and extended their ravages east as far as the 

 state of Iowa. J During the same year they devoured 

 the crops in part of Minnesota and advanced as far to the 

 north-east as the Lake of the Woods, where I saw them 

 on Garden Island in August. During the autumn of the 

 same year they appeared on the White Horse plains 

 north of the Assinniboine, where they deposited their 

 eggs. The swarms of this insect must have extended as 

 far west as the South Branch of the Saskatchewan and 

 covered the country in a greater or less degree between 

 the Lake of the Woods and the South Branch, a distance 

 in an air line of 560 miles ; the perfect insect in 1857, or 

 the young brood in 1858 having been observed nearly 

 continuously over that wide extent of country. 



* Alexander Ross.— " The Red River Settlement/' &c. ; 1856. 

 f Ibid. 



\ Lieutenant Warren. 



c c 3 



