CHRONOLOGY, 1879: MONTANA. 
IS 
appear as fine coal-dust, iu patches of some six feet square. They grew, and for four 
months continued to hatch out fresh ones ; it was late in the season before they left r 
and at this date there is no appearance of any for the next season. Not a green thing 
grew at this place ; the wheat was up six inches high, but now all gone, as also oats : 
all trees and even sage-brush stripped. I have known the hoppers since they first 
came to Utah, but the continued hatching out for so long a time I never saw before. 
At the one and same time could be seen on the ground hoppers ready to fly, others 
just winged, and again others so small you could just see a place covered as with coal 
dust. I kuow of no place iu Utah that has suffered so much as this this season. Set- 
tlements only two miles oft' raised some three parts of crop ; others just across the 
Weber River, half crop. Fish died in the creek as it dried up, and this creek was 
knowu as Loss Creek, from the Indians years ago ; but never since the settlement, now 
some seventeen years, has it answered to its name. 
Mr. Jobu Tooue, of Croydon, also writes : 
I have felt so disheartened at the loss of everything, not having raised the first 
green thing on which we can subsist either man or beast, that it has taxed all our 
physical energies endeavoring to find ourselves something to live upon. 
In June, locusts were observed at Coalville, flying south and south- 
east, very high in the air. 
At Lake Point some damage was done to grain in the spring, and a 
few small male spretus were observed there by us August 7. 
August 5, a few locusts were seen flying in the air just east of Peter- 
son, on the Union Pacific Railroad, but there was no migration south- 
ward from Montana such as took place last year in August ; so that 
Northern Utah will in 1880 be, in all probability, comparatively free from 
youug locusts, and probably from incoming swarms. 
THE LOCUST IN MONTANA IN 1879. 
The first grasshopper of the season was placed on our desk this week by Mr. F. F. 
Fridley, of the Upper Yellowstone. The specimen before us was several weeks old and 
seemed to belong to the hungry species. Mr. Fridley says large numbers have hatched 
out in the vicinity of his place. — [Bozeman Courier, April 10, 1879. 
There are no grasshopper deposits this year to send forth a horde of destroyers upon 
the young crop. The only thing to be feared from this pest are th$ immigrants, and 
the earlier grain is put in the better chance it will have to escape. — [Roclcy Mountain 
Husbandmun, March 13, 1879. 
This year the settled portions of Montana were entirely free from the 
locusts, either unfledged or summer immigrants, as will be seen by the 
following correspondence. Large numbers of locusts were reported by 
the Rocky Mountain Husbandman to have hatched out in the Upper Yel- 
lowstone River, but they were never heard from afterward. 
Mr. O. C. Mortoon writes from Fort Benton that one very small scat- 
tering swarm of locusts arrived there July 21 from the southeast, the 
wind blowing gently from that quarter : 
No eggs were deposited about Fort Benton this year, no swarms afterward appear- 
ing. There is no prospect now of this section suffering from the locust in 1880, unless 
by incoming swarms in July or August. 
Mr. Chauncey Barbour, editor of the WeeMy Missoulian, reports that 
there were no locusts in the Missoula Valley in 1877, or 1878, or 1879 : 
" I confidently predict that grasshoppers in destructive numbers will, 
not visit Western Montana before 1885." 
