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lay the eggs of broods from which, serious damage to next year's crops may follow, 
and it is with a view to prevent this contingency that the present information is 
placed at the disposal of the public. The measures for prevention are briefly, but 
fully, explained in the present bulletin, the material for which has been chiefly pre- 
pared by Prof. Waldron, perfectly familiar with the premises from actual personal 
experience. The measures recommended are simple, easily followed, and so cheap and 
effective that no excuse can be found for a failure to heed the warning and follow 
the suggestions offered. Further than this, it should be borne in mind that plowing, 
the chief dependence for prevention of the locust plague, has other advantages in 
the way of soil improvement and suppression of weeds which must fully compensate 
for any outlay required. 
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCUS1 
(By C. B. Waldron.) 
The habits of the locust are well known, and measures for their complete destruc- 
tion are so cheap and simple that they can be carried out by simply varying the 
agricultural methods now practiced and not adding materially to their expense. 
No attempt will be made in this bulletin to give more of the habits and natural his- 
tory of the locust than is absolutely required in dealing with the problem of exter- 
mination. 
The eggs in the region named were doubtless laid during the latter part of August 
by locusts coming over from Manitoba and perhaps from Minnesota. Flights of the 
insects that were passing towards the regions now infested were observed on the 
20th of August. The eggs were laid in stubble fields, as would have been supposed 
from our former knowledge of the habits of the locust and as subsequent investiga- 
tion proved. If the presence of the locusts last season had been properly reported 
measures would have been adopted that, with no financial outlay, would have 
absolutely prevented the reappearance of the pest. 
It has been found by repeated trials, particularly in Minnesota, that if the eggs of 
the locust are covered with 4 or 5 inches of moist earth, or 6 inches of dry earth, 
the hatching will either be prevented or the young will die before being able to 
reach the surface. It follows, then, that we may completely destroy the egg by plow- 
ing the fields in which they are laid, either in autumn or before the middle of June, 
at which time the hatching begins in this latitude. As the eggs are never laid in 
thick sod nor in loosely plowed earth it will be seen that plowing need not extend to 
any land except the stubble fields. If all the stubble land is put to wheat in the 
regular manner, the plowing to be done either in fall or spring, no word of complaint 
will come because of grasshoppers. If summer fallowing is adopted the plowing 
should be done in May or early June, and the land may be plowed again in the fall 
if considered necessa^. This method of fallowing, if followed from the start, has 
the added advantage of destroying such weed pests as the Pepper Grass, "French 
Weed," etc. 
Even if the plowing is not finished before hatching begins, it should be kept up 
until the stubble fields are all turned over. The period of hatching begins about 
June 1, or later if the land is lower, and continues about six weeks. 
When the young grasshoppers are first hatched they are covered with a little sac, 
and by it enabled to push up through 2 or 3 inches of earth. If the grasshoppers 
are covered with earth after the sac disappears, from lto 2 inches is sufficient to kill 
them. One reason for continuing the plowing, then, is to bury and kill what in- 
sects may already be hatched. Even the grasshoppers that are not plowed under 
will be very apt to starve before escaping from the plowed land. As a rule it will 
be found well to plow a strip 5 or 10 rods wide right around the stubble field to retain 
