16 
becoming the ravages of this insect pest amongst the growing crops 
of Illinois. The cool weather of the past month has been favorable 
to their multiplication and growth, and they are now sweeping with 
all the destructiveness of a prairie fire some of the fairest and most 
promising portions of our State. Meadows and pastures, wheat, oat, 
rye and corn fields, gardens, yards, trees and shrubbery, in fact 
every green thing is disappearing before them. In many localities it 
is thought that the wheat crop is so far advanced that the stripping 
of the leaves alone will not materially injure it. In many instances 
corn can be replanted and the second crop probably will escape 
them. But if their ravages could be stopped to-day the loss already 
occasioned by them could not be estimated except by millions of 
dollars.” 
They usually commence marching when about half or two-thirds 
grown; and so far as I have observed, those leaving one field all 
march in the same direction, but not always, as is supposed by 
some, with unfailing certainty, toward another field in which there 
is proper food, for in the case hereafter mentioned, where, in 1875, 
they left a meadow near our town, the movement was directly to¬ 
ward town—no field with any suitable food being nearer than a 
mile in that direction. Nor is it true that they always remain in 
one place so long as sufficient food is to be found there, for in 
more than one instance I have known them to leave a field abun¬ 
dantly supplied with suitable food and march into others. In one 
instance, where they attacked a field of oats and penetrated it a 
short distance, mowing it as they proceeded, they suddenly quit it. 
There does not appear to be any uniformity in the direction the 
different armies, or armies from different fields, take. In 1875, the 
army from one field was moving directly south, while that from an¬ 
other moved directly east. 
While marching, they move with rapid motions and apparently 
■with an uneasy feeling, especially if the sun is shining. 
The following statement, from the Prairie Farmer of July 4, 1861, 
is probably not overdrawn: 
“An army of them was observed to travel sixty yards in two 
hours, in an effort to get around a ditch. They began to travel 
from the infested districts between two and three o’clock, P. M.; 
toward sundown the tide of travel was retrograde. They did not 
travel at night; they feed chiefly by night and in the forenoon. As 
to their number, they have been seen moving from one field to an¬ 
other, three tiers deep; a ditch has been filled with them to the 
depth of three inches in half an hour." 
As we have alluded to the fact that they are seen exhibiting two 
very distinct characteristics, we may as well explain here what we 
mean by this statement. 
The disposition of the worms in some seasons to travel in vast 
armies is really abnormal, their normal habit being that of a Cut- 
w T orm, when they remain hidden beneath the grass, cutting it off 
close to the ground, seldom showing themselves, not even in cloudy 
weather, but probably coming forth at night to feed. These, so far 
as my observations go, never leave their hiding places to. march, 
although in a season when others are migrating. In one instance 
that came under my observation they cut the grass to such an ex- 
