58 
the appointment of measurers, as contemplated, on the ground that owing to the 
incalculable numbers of the insects the provision requiring the counties to pay all 
bounties in excess of the proposed State appropriation of $100,000 would virtually 
bankrupt the afflicted counties. I therefore deemed it proper to defer action for fur- 
ther knowledge and consideration. Finding upon calculation that an equal distri- 
bution of the available fund would afford to each inhabitant of the infested localities 
an average of but forty cents, a sum too trifling in itself to induce additional efforts 
for the extermination of the pests, I became convinced that the enforcement of the 
bounty law would entail upon counties already impoverished by insect ravages a 
burden of debt which would prove more disastrous than the scourge it was intended 
to avert. I therefore, against the wishes of a few localities, but in compliance with 
a vast preponderance of petitions from the people directly interested, declined to 
make the appointments requisite for the practical operation of the law. The decis- 
ion was justified by the result, for, in the absence of that concerted defense against 
the insects by ditches and other protective means dictated by experience, all efforts 
induced by the proposed State and county expenditures combined would certainly 
have been unavailing, especially where the destructive swarms were most dense 
aud where protection was most needed from their ravages. The sum thus saved to 
the State remains intact, or rather the contemplated loan was not effected, the law 
in express terms specifying the exclusive object for which it was to be effected. 
A good law, once enacted and on the statute book, may not be called 
into operation for many years, but would beyond all doubt serve an 
admirable panose in the event of a locust invasion. The following are 
what we conceive should be the essential features of an efficient bounty 
law : (1) The bounty should be paid out of the State treasury ; or it should 
be graded and borne equally, one-third by the local townships, one-third by 
the county \ and one-third by the State. (2) The bounty should be immedi- 
ately available to those earning it. (3) The act should, so far as possible, 
tend to the destruction of the eggs. (4) After the eggs, the destruction of 
the newly -hatched locusts should be encouraged by the act. A bushel of 
the newly hatched insects will contain thirty or more times as many in- 
dividuals as will a bushel of the pupae, and, moreover, their destruction 
prevents the subsequent injury. It would be folly to pay 60 cents a 
bushel for ihem later in the season when they are nearly full-grown and 
have done most of the harm they are capable of doing. The price, there- 
fore, should vary with the season ; and while, in latitude 39°, 75 cents or 
$1 should be offered in March, the price should diminish to 50 cents in 
April, 25 cents in May, and 10 cents in June. As the dates of hatch- 
ing vary with the latitude, so the law should vary in the matter of 
dates, according to the requirements of each particular State. In ad- 
dition to the foregoing requirements of such an act, every precaution 
should be taken to prevent fraud and dishonesty in obtaining the 
money. 
The laws obliging proper labor will prove more beneficial to a com- 
munity than the bounty laws, and the labor is best performed, first in 
destroying the eggs in the fall, and next in destroying theyoinig insects 
after the bulk of them have hatched out in the spring. 
In the more thinly settled parts of the country laws may be more or 
h/ss ineffectual, so far as the general destruction of the insects is coi^ 
