138 Cockroaches, Locusts, Grasshoppers, and Crickets 
hand to feed the millions of young which hatched each spring. So, after 
exhausting the scanty wild herbage of their breeding-grounds, and develop¬ 
ing to their winged stage, hosts of locusts would rise high into the air until 
they were caught by the great wind-streams bearing southeast, and, with 
parachute-like wings expanded and air-sacs in the body stretched to their 
fullest, would be borne for a thousand miles to the rich grain-fields of the 
Fig. 170.—The two-striped locust, Melanoplus bivittatus, female. 
(After Lugger; natural size indicated by line.) 
Mississippi Valley. As far east as the middle of Iowa and Missouri and 
south to Texas these great swarms would spread; and once settled to ground 
and started at their chief business, that of eating, not a green thing escaped. 
First the grains and grasses; then the vegetables and bushes; then the 
leaves and fresh twigs and bark of trees! A steady munching was audible 
over the doomed land! And this munching was the devouring of dollars. 
Fifty millions of dollars were eaten in the seasons of 1874-76 alone. 
