238 The Insects of the Past Year and Progress in Insect Studies. 



during the season, was thirty-five thousand. The total expenditures, 

 under the different methods employed, was $17,757; and, as the result, 

 the crops of most of the farms were saved. 



It having been found last spring (1889) that the eggs of the locusts 

 had been mainly deposited in stubble-fields, and that in every case 

 where such lands had been plowed, as the result of the deep burial of 

 the eggs beneath the surface, hardly a locust had made its appearance, 

 it was determined to plow all of the more badly infested fields, 

 through the aid extended by the State, while continuing the use of 

 the " hopper-dozers " on the less infested portions. All such fields as 

 were found on examination to contain a large number of the eggs, if 

 exceeding twenty-five acres (the smaller plots being left to the owners 

 to plow), were condemned, and farmers living in the vicinity were 

 invited to plow them within a given time. The plowing was to be 

 properly done as supervised by the owner, to the depth of at least five 

 inches, for which the laborer was entitled to draw his pay of $1.25 per 

 acre. This measure proved to be a complete success. No locusts 

 hatched in the plowed fields. Where the young had emerged from 

 the eggs, they were buried in the furrows and killed. The number of 

 acres plowed as above, was six thousand three hundred and sixty-one — 

 a trifle less than ten square miles. The entire expenditure for the 

 season, including the " hopper-dozer " catching, burning over stubble 

 and dead grass fields, poisoning with London purple, etc., was $10,131. 



As the result of the operations above narrated, the insect has been 

 virtually destroyed throughout the infested districts. Compara- 

 tively few eggs were laid last year, and there is no apprehension 

 of serious injury from the few survivors the coming season. 



When you recall the fearful losses from this Rocky Mountain locust 

 in some of the Western States in former years that brought poverty 

 and starvation to thousands of their people — estimated at two hun- 

 dred millions of dollars in a single year (1874), in the four States of 

 Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa— you can not but regard it as a 

 triumph for economic entomology, that this great scourge, almost 

 equaling in destrnctiveness, in years of its abundance, the migratory 

 locust of the old world, has been brought under control. 



I have on many former occasions felt it my duty and privilege to 

 mention and commend the work being done by the Entomological 

 Division of the Department of Agriculture at Washington. It well 

 deserves the liberal support extended to it by our general govern- 

 ment, and the appreciation and encouragement which it is receiving 



