39 
planted out less than a year ago, and a few acres of these trees had 
been completely defoliated by the locusts. 1 learned that when the lat- 
ter appeared upon the trees nothing whatever was done to stop then- 
ravages. They had also apx>eared in large numbers upon the young 
trees in the adjoining orchards, but had been destroyed by the bran and 
arsenic mixture that had been put out when the locusts first made their 
appearance. We also visited a certain locality about 8 miles south of 
Oroville, where a large tract of land had recently been set out to fruit 
trees; here but little damage had been occasioned by locusts. 
From Oroville I went by stage to Biggs, in the southwestern part of 
Butte County; the country passed through was mostly bare pasture 
lands, where very few locusts of any kind were seen. From Biggs I 
took the train to Bedding, in Shasta County, and interviewed several 
persons there; from them I learned that locusts had not appeared in 
large numbers in that locality the present year, nor could I learn that 
they had been at all numerous in this State north of Bedding. I 
learned, however, that several small orchards in the vicinity of Cotton- 
wood, in the southern part of Shasta County, had suffered from the 
attacks of locusts. Accordingly I returned to Cottonwood and spent 
the greater portion of a day in that vicinity, and found that the injury 
to the orchards occasioned by locusts was slight, there being but few 
orchards in that locality and these very small ones. This completed 
my observations in the field, and I returned to Los Angeles by way of 
San Francisco. At the latter place I visited the Academy of Natural 
Sciences and obtained the names of the birds and plants referred to in 
the subsequent pages of this report. 
As was the case in the year 1885, the species of locust that had pro- 
duced the greatest amount of injury the present season is the Devas- 
tating or California Locust (Melanojrtus devastator Scudd.). These 
always have a small blunt spine in the middle of the breast between 
the front legs, and the hind or under wings are wholly hyaline or glassy. 
The colors vary to a considerable degree; in normally marked individ- 
uals the ground color is dark gray, and there is a blackish stripe along 
each side of the thorax, several black spots on the front wings, and a 
series of black marks on the hind thighs, but in a few individuals the 
ground color is a very pale yellowish, and the black markings above 
referred to are very indistinct or are sometimes entirely wanting. 
These pale individuals belonged to both sexes and are doubtless imma- 
ture specimens, which later in the season will acquire the normal black 
markings of the other and more mature form. I submitted specimens 
of these pale colored individuals to Professor Riley, who wrote me that 
they belonged to Melanoplus devastator, and he also referred the darkly 
marked specimens to the same species. Both of these tonus have the 
hind tibia', or shins, of a bluish color, but! found associated with them, 
both in the breeding grounds and also among those that had migrated 
to the orchards and vineyards, a form which resembled them in colors 
