488 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
GIGANTIC LOCUSTS. 
carefully executed figures of them which are herewith presented, Plates iii and 
iv, should have a place in the Transactions of the Society, as a memento of the 
lamented donor. 
When we look upon these huge creatures, the Goliaths of their race, we are 
led to think that the statement of Pliny is not so gross an exaggeration as has 
been supposed, when he speaks of grasshoppers which are three feet in length, 
with legs so large that the people use them for saws. And recollecting what 
voracious cormorants the insects of this group are, the first query which arises 
in the mind is, Are these insects common in the countries which they inhabit ? 
And when we learn that they are often quite numerous we next ask, How then 
is it possible for anything to grow there ? A dozen of these insects in one of 
our gardens would in a few days utterly ruin everything therein. But the 
same causes which in hot climates give such vigor to animal life as to produce 
insects of this enormous size, operate equally upon the vegetable kingdom, 
stimulating it to such a rapidity and exuberance of growth, such a rank luxu¬ 
riance ofdevelopment, as appears incredible and miraculous to those acquainted 
onlj' with the vegetation of temperate and cold latitudes. Hence the havoc 
which these insects and hosts of others which are akin to them occasion, 
becomes speedily repaired. 
The migratory or Asiatic locust, which, like the Asiatic cholera among dis¬ 
eases, stands most prominent for the sudden and sweeping destruction which 
it occasions, is one of the largest insects of this kind which inhabit the eastern 
continent, measuring two inches in length. But in the tropical countries of 
America four different insects of the same group are met with which arc nearly 
or quite double the size of that noted species. And wo are informed that like 
it, these insects are migratory, uniting together in swarms at times when they 
are numerous, taking wing, and causing the most frightful devastation in the 
districts where they alight, often consuming every green thing and leaving the 
spot as naked and black as though fire had passed over it. Hence the name 
locust is supposed to have come from the Latin words locus ustus, signifying a 
burnt place. 
Whilst the U. S. ship Portsmouth was lying in the harbor of Acapulco, 
Mexico, in the summer of 1854, Lieut. Thomas Pattison informs me that per 
sons visiting the vessel frequently gave accounts of the terrible havoc which 
was then going on a few miles back from the coast, from swarms of large 
grasshoppers which had alighted there; and some of the officers on their re¬ 
turn from an excursion on shore, among other things related that they had 
seen the limbs of trees which were thicker than a man’s arm, broken down by 
the numbers of these insects which had alighted upon them to feed upon the 
leaves. A large grasshopper which Lieut. P. found upon the coast and which 
he thought might perhaps be a straggler from these swarms, probably was not 
the species concerned in this ruin, as it pertains to the group called caty-dids 
or green grasshoppers (Family Gryllitbe) and not to the family of locusts 
( LocustidtB ). These two families are readily distinguished from each other by 
their antenna!, which are short and of equal thickness, like a thread, in the 
latter, and in the former long, slender and perceptibly tapering towards their 
