102 
FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 
certainty, that for the future — all other influencing circumstances continuing the same 
— the geographical range of a swarm of Hateful Grasshoppers, descending from the 
Rocky Mountains, will always continue to be the same or nearly the same. 
It may perhaps he thought, by those who have not carefully studied the difference 
between the two cases, that, if the Colorado Potato-hug could descend from the Rocky 
Mountains into Nebraska and Iowa, and then pass onwards into Illinois, and so indefi¬ 
nitely forwards in its grand march to the Atlantic Ocean, the Hateful Grasshopper may 
do the very same thing. But the two cases are not parallel. The Colorado Potato-hug, 
as w r e all of us in northern and central Illinois know from wof'ul experience, propagates 
freely and rapidly, generation after generation, in the northern lowlands of the Missis¬ 
sippi Valley, and spreads by this means every year further and further to the eastward ; 
although it is very true that in the more southerly lowlands of that Valley — such as 
Kansas, and Missouri and South Illinois — it propagates much less freely and rapidly, 
and consequently spreads hut very slowly indeed towards the east. On the other hand, 
superabundant evidence has been detailed in this chapter, to prove that the Hateful 
Grasshopper does not breed anywhere in the lowlands of the Mississippi Valley, but, on 
the contrary, gradually wastes away and disappears from off the face of the earth, when 
raised there from the egg, without itself laying any eggs at all. Therefore it is utterly 
improbable that this insect should, at any future period, breed freely in the country 
immediately to the west of the Mississippi, and thus pass gradually eastward into Illinois, 
and after breeding there pass on still further eastward. And in point of fact we know 
that the true Hateful Grasshopper has never been found by any entomologists, even in 
very small numbers, from one end of Illinois to the other. Moreover, the Colorado 
Potato-bug is a slow-flying insect, physically unable to fly across the vast Plains of the 
Western Desert at one fell swoop. Hence, until the distance between Colorado and 
eastern Kansas and Nebraska was bridged by settlements where potatoes were grown, 
it was incapable of passing into Kansas and Nebraska, and thence through Iowa into 
Illinois; and we know that history proves to us, so far as any negative fact can be 
historically proved, that it never did so. On the other hand, the Hateful Grasshopper 
is a rapid-flying insect, capable of flying hundreds of miles at a stretch, when caught 
up by a strong westerly wind; and there is historical evidence that it crossed the Plains, 
that intervene between Colorado and the inhabitable or eastern parts of Kansas, in 1820, 
or long before any white man had thrust his plow into the virgin soil of those two dis¬ 
tricts. Therefore, if this Gnsshopper is going at some future period to make its w r ay 
into Illinois, not by successive broods being raised one from the other on the route, 
but by one single uninterrupted flight from the Rocky Mountains, we have a right to 
ask, why it has never done so at some previous period ? 
Our State has now been organized for about 50 years, and for many preceding years 
it was sparsely inhabited both by the French and by the English. Yet, in all that long 
period of time, no record of any such Grasshopper-invasion of our State, as history 
shows to have repeatedly taken place in various States to the west of us, and in various 
years from A. D. 1820 up to the present year, 1867, can be met with in any printed 
document, or gleaned from the trusty memory of the “ oldest inhabitant.” Why is 
this ? What possible cause can be assigned, why, up to the year 1870, for example, the 
Hateful Grasshopper should never have flown eastward from the Rocky Mountains 
within 115 miles of Illinois, and in that particular year should fly so many miles further 
east as to touch the sacred soil of Illinois ? The distance from the alpine regions of the 
Rocky Mountains to the most easterly point that this insect has ever hitherto reached, 
