ACTING STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
83 
autumn deposited by the females in the ground throughout the infested region in 
countless myriads, would not generally hatch out that autumn and be destroyed by the 
frosts — as many fondly anticipated — but that the great bulk of them would lie safely 
in the ground through the winter, and hatch out as the spring of 1867 opened ; when, 
in all likelihood, the larvae that proceeded from them would do a vast amount ot 
damage to the young crops. But, at the same time, I distinctly foretold, that the 
grasshoppers developed from these eggs, in 1867, although their general health would, 
perhaps, not be materially injured, would yet have their generative systems so impaired 
by the difference in food-plants, climate, density of the air, temperature, moisture, &c., 
(or what Naturalists call the “ Conditions of Life,”) which they met with in the low. 
land country, that they would become incapable of propagating their species any 
further; and consequently that that entire brood of grasshoppers would “ then and 
there die out.” Whence I deduced the corollary, that they could never cross the 
Mississippi and gradually spread eastward, as the Colorado Potato-bug has notoriously 
done, and as I prophesied before-hand that it would do. (See my Paper on that insect 
in the Practical Entomologist for October, 1865.) 
Now let us see how far the facts have verified my predictions ; and if it appear that 
I have been a true prophet, both in the case of the Colorado Potato-bug and of the 
Hateful Grasshopper, then I have a right to ask that, for the future, some little more 
attention should be paid to my opinions on such subjects, than to the wild fancies oi 
men, who know no more about insects and their habits and peculiarities than a newly 
born baby does of the multiplication-table. But first, let us examine a few additional 
details as to the operations of the Hateful Grasshopper in the autumn of 1866, in Texas 
and in Missouri, through which States I had not previously mapped out its course. 
The Hateful Grasshopper in Texas in 1866. 
“Collins Co ., North-east Texas , Oct., 1866. — Grasshoppers appeared in the north-west 
part of this county about Sept. 1st, and destroyed all the wheat that had come up, and 
then passed on to the south-west. They have nearly disappeared. They fly very high, 
and in some places were so thick, that we estimated them at one to the square inch. 
Monthly Report Agricultural Department , 1866, p. 441. 
The Hateful Grasshopper in Missouri in 1866. 
“ Leavenworth , North-east Kansas , Oct. 18, 1866. —Our eastern mail a few days ago was 
late, because the train was stopped by Grasshoppers. The track became so slippery by 
the crushing of their bodies, that the wheels would not turn.”— Private letter from C. H. 
Cushing. 
“ Atchison North-east Kansas Feb., 1867.-In Sept. 1866 the Grasshoppers spread over 
the whole of Kansas, and before cold weather they advanced about 50 miles into Mis¬ 
souri. They devoured all our buckwheat, turnips, tobacco and most of the green 
fodder, and all the young wheat that had been sown.” — L. A. Alderson , in the American 
Agriculturist , March 1867. 
“Jackson Co., Missouri , March , 1867.-The Grasshoppers did not make their appear¬ 
ance in this county until about the 1st of October, which was too late for them to do 
the amount of injury here that was done further west. Fall wheat, young timothy, and 
other kinds of tender grass were completely eaten off, and their eggs deposited in mul¬ 
tiplied millions.” — “B.,” in Country Gentleman , March 28, 1867. 
