122 
HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packard. 
It has also swarmed in Canada. Dr. Harris enumerates its 
visitations in New England in the last century when it de¬ 
voured every green thing. The habits of this species are 
not well known, except that it appears in midsummer in 
the winged state. The wingless larvae appear in June, and, 
as Harris recommends, hay crops should be mown early, 
before the insects fly in swarms. The last of summer they 
couple and lay their eggs in holes in the earth, where they 
are hatched in the spring. 
As Harris suggests, this insect can onty be kept under by 
concerted action on the part of farmers. “In the south of 
France the people make a business, at certain seasons of the 
year (probably,in the autumn and late in the spring), of col¬ 
lecting locusts and their eggs, the latter being turned out of 
the ground in little masses, cemented and covered with a 
sort of gum in which they are enveloped by the insects.” 
Various forms of drag-nets can be invented for collecting 
them in large numbers, and run, if necessary, through a field 
by horse-power. The inventive genius of our farmers will 
easily suggest methods of gathering these insects by the 
bushel, when they can be thrown into hot water, and fed to 
swine. An entomological friend has found by, his own ex¬ 
perience that roasted grasshoppers are excellent eating — 
“ better than frogs.” Only let some enterprising genius of 
the kitchen once set the example of offering to his customers 
roasted grasshoppers, rare-done, and fricasseed canker worms 
(for we have it on the word of an entomologist that cater¬ 
pillars are pleasing to the palate of man), and these droves 
of entomological beeves will perchance supplant their ver¬ 
tebrate rivals at the shambles, and instead of cattle fairs, 
we shall have grasshopper festivals, and county caterpillar 
shows. 
The Caloptenus spretus of Uhler* (Fig. 87 a) appears in 
immense numbers in the country between the Mississippi 
and the Rocky Mountains, and extending from the Saskatch- 
26 
