864 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
Altur WORM. RECLAIMING 8WAMPT LANDS EXI>BI.S IT. 
This enables us to account for a remarkable fact, namely, the 
difference in the localities where this army worm has appeared 
this year, as compared with its appearance so extensively in 
1770. Then it attracted more notice along the valley of the 
Connecticut river than anywhere else in New England. This year 
we have seen no notice of its occurrence anywhere along the 
Connecticut river, whilst in the vicinity of the sea coast it has 
made its appearance from one extremity of New England to the 
other. Why has it not come out along the Connecticut river this 
year the same that it did ninety years ago? I doubt not it is 
because the swamps which originally occupied so much of the low 
lands adjacent to this river have now been so thoroughly ditched 
and drained and converted into dry meadow lands, that the 
former lurking places of this insect there are now all broken up. 
And thus the chief places of resort now remaining to it in New 
England, are the extensive marshes along the sea-coast which it 
is nearly or quite impossible to reclaim. 
1 have now finished all I supposed I should have to say on this 
subject. But at the moment of leaving it another thought occurs 
to me, so strongly confirming the view I have taken, that I can 
not but present it. 
Our last previous visit of this army worm was in 1817, the 
year following the remarkably cold and dry summer of 1816. 
Thus the swamps were dry then, just as they were last year, for 
this insect to multiply. Whether the fore part of 1817 was wet 
and rainy I know not, though very probably memoranda are in 
existence, stating the fact, if it was so. 
On the theory I have stated, also, the summers of 1769 and- 
1789 should have been very dry, and the forepart of the follow¬ 
ing years wet, to occasion the previous visits we have had of this 
army worm. Were these years of this character? The only 
work in my library, which I think of, that will be apt to give any 
information on this subject is, that to which reference has already 
been made, Webster on Pestilential Diseases. On referring to it, 
I find it stated that the summer of 1769 was very hot. The heat 
and drouth of this year cut short the rice crops in India, causing 
a famine there. And then we are told, the two next years were 
distinguished by the most terrible storms,- rains and inundations, 
accounts of which fill the newspapers of those years. Then again, 
of the next period when this worm appeared, we are informed 
