Cockroaches, Locusts, Grasshoppers, and Crickets 133 
Antennae with many segments, and longer than the fore femora. 
Mesothorax twice as long as prothorax. Anisomorpha. 
Mesothorax no longer than prothorax— ... Tinema. 
Tibiae without groove at tip, as above described. m 
Hind femora with one or more distinct spines on the median line of the under side 
near the tip ... Diapheromera. 
Hind femora without such spines. 
Head, especially in female, with a pair of tubercles or ridges on the front between 
the eyes. Sermyle. 
Head without such tubercle or ridges. Bacunculus. 
One day in early summer of the Centennial Year (1876) the people all 
over Kansas might have been seen staring hard with shaded eyes and serious 
faces up towards the sun. By persistent looking one could see high in the 
air a thin silvery white shifting cloud or haze of which old residents sadly 
said, “It’s them again, all right.” Now this meant, if it were true, that, 
far from being all right, it was about as wrong as it could be for Kansas. 
“Them” meant the hateful Rocky Mountain locusts, and the locusts meant 
devastation and ruin for Kansas crops and farmers. In 1866 and again 
in 1874 and 1875 the locusts had come; first a thin silvery cloud high over¬ 
head—sunlight glancing from millions of thin membranous fluttering 
wings—and then a swarming, crawling, leaping, and ever and always 
busily eating horde of locusts over all the green things of the land. And 
the old residents spoke the truth in that summer of 1876. It was “them,” 
uncounted hosts of them, and only such patriotic farmers as had laid by 
money for a rainy day or a grasshopper year could visit the Centennial 
Exposition. 
Not all locusts are migratory or appear in such countless swarms as 
this invader from the high plateau of the northern Rocky Mountains. In 
South America another locust species, larger than ours, has similar habits; 
having its permanent breeding-grounds on the great plateau at the eastern 
foot of the Chilean Andes and descending almost every year in swarms on 
the great wheat-fields of Argentina. And in Algeria and Asia Minor occurs 
the migratory locust of the Scriptures, a still other and larger species. But 
of the 500 (app.) locust species, members of the family Acridiidae, which 
are known in the United States but three or four can be fairly called 
migratory, and of these the Rocky Mountain locust, Melanoplus spretus, is 
the most conspicuous. The lesser migratory locust, Melanoplus atlanis, 
does much injury in New England and other eastern states, while the 
pellucid locust, Camnula pellucida , is a migratory species that often does 
much harm in California and other western states. Sometimes large 
bodies of immature wingless individuals of the large species Dissosteira 
longipennis, abundant on the plains of eastern Colorado and western Kansas 
