POSITION OF THE LOCUST WIIILE FLYING. 
87 
and hence have only to sustain themselves in the air, the labor of which 
is less and less as the velocity of the wind increases, renders the state- 
ments of such extended flights less improbable than they would other- 
wise appear. 
4. THE MODE OF FLIGHT; AND MANNER IN WHICH SWARMS ARE 
FORMED AND MOVE. 
The position of the individuals during flight has not yet been studied 
. with sufficient care in this country to enable us to speak as exactly in re- 
gard to it as we desire. So far as the observations of the Commission in 
reference to it extend, and the reports of local observers go, it appears 
to be their rule when the wind is any ways strong to turn their heads to 
the wind, the hind portion of the body dropping so that the axis of the 
body forms an angle of 30° or 40° with the plane of their flights. In 
this position the beating of their wings against the wind has a tendency 
to carry them upwards ; in fact, the force of the wind against the ex- 
panded wings would have this tendency. This, as will be observed, is 
the easiest possible position they can assume, and the one that requires 
the least muscular effort; it follows also that the stronger the wind the 
less the effort necessary to keep them up. When the wind is very light 
and insufficient to support them with a moderate exertion of muscular 
power, they either come down, or turning their heads in the direction 
the breeze is moving, propel themselves by true flying. 
An accurate observer writing from Marshall, Lyon County, Minnesota, 
They only float with the wind when flying high, and go just as fast as the wind 
blows. With a strong glass I can plainly see locusts and cotton wood-seeds flying 
together, and they keep the same rate of progress, but the locusts will leave the 
seed to the right and left and go below and above them, showing that they make use 
of their wings to keep up and gyrate in flying, but I think they propel ahead none at 
all after they get high, but fly forward and upward very fast 'when rising from the 
ground to fly away or for short flights. — [D. F. Weymouth. 
Now this statement, which corresponds with most of the statements 
on this point by our local observers and our own observations, makes it 
evident that the locusts when high were moving backwards, that is, with 
the head to the wind and opposite the direction in which they were mov- 
ing ; for there is no position they can assume with the head forward, in 
which the wind can buoy them up and drive them forward. The only 
position they could assume to accomplish this end would be with the 
abdomen turned obliquely upward and the head downward, an impossi- 
ble posture for them to maintain. 
Another correspondent says : 
They always travel with the wind, that is in the same direction ; of a calm day they 
travel as fast as the wind, but when the wind is strong they right about face, letting the 
wind carry them. — [H. M. Cox. 
This corresponds exactly with theory and with our own observations. 
When the air is nearly calm and they attempt flight they must ueces- 
