37 
more thickly settled sections, it will prove beneficial and give employ- 
ment to young people and others who have nothing else to do. 
DESTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG OR UNFLEDGED LOCUSTS. 
In the destruction of the young, no methods that will not sweep them 
away in wholesale fashion have any value for our western farmers, how- 
ever valuable they may be to the owner of a small flower or truck gar- 
den. It is for this reason that we have been able to profit so little by 
European methods, and have had to invent means suitable to our broad 
western fields and the extensive nature of our farming operations. The 
best that most European authors can advise is the killing of the insects 
with flattened implements or brush ; while Gerstacker and other writers 
devote page after page to prove the superiority over other methods of 
catching the insects with hand-nets — a method which, while doubtless 
of some utility in dense German settlements, would prove absolutely 
futile on our large and scattered prairie-farms and against the excessive 
numbers of the pests which our farmers have to deal with. While, 
therefore, we shall mention all available means that have been or may 
be employed, we shall devote more especial attention to those which 
are useful in a broad and general way in the field. 
Experience has shown that the results of any particular measure will 
vary in different regions, dependent, to some extent, upon the nature 
of the soil, the condition of the crops, and the general characteristics of 
indigenous vegetation. Circumstances may also render some particu- 
lar measure available and profitable to one farmer where it would be 
unprofitable to another. For convenience, the means of accomplishing 
the desired result may be classified into: (1) Burning, (2) crushing, (3) 
trapping, (4) catching, (5) use of destructive agents. 
(1) Burning. — This method is, perhaps, the best in prairie and wheat- 
growing regions, which compose the larger part of the area subject to 
devastation by this locust. In such regions there is usually more or 
less old straw or hay which may be scattered over or around the field 
in heaps and windrows, and into which the locusts, for some time after 
they hatch, may be driven and burned. During cold or damp weather 
they congregate of their own accord under such shelter, when they may 
be destroyed by burning without the necessity of previous driving. 
Much has been said for and against the beneficial results of burning 
the prairies in the spring. This is chiefly beneficial around cultivated 
fields or along the roadsides, from which the locusts may be driven, or 
from which they will of themselves pass for the shelter the prairie af- 
fords. Scarcely any eggs are laid in rank prairie, and the general im- 
pression that locusts are slaughtered by myriads in burning extensive 
areas is an erroneous one, at least in the temporary region. 
In burning extensive prairies after the bulk of the locusts hatch, the 
nests and eggs of many game birds are destroyed ; but as the birds 
themselves escape destruction on the wing, they may and do return and 
