Holmes County Republican. [volume] (Millersburg, Holmes Co., O. [Ohio]) 1870-1895, 1874-08-13
The Insect Plague.


The Insect Plague.
Colorado has sent us the potato-bug
and we owe it bitter grudge for the
infliction. 1t is some consolation to
know that, while the villainous insect
has spread itself all over the Eastern
States, it still remains to plague the Ter
ritory from which it came; but the
people to be affected by it, there, are so
few that this consolation really amounts
to little. The whole country, from the
Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic ocean,
is now the pray of this insect pest; and
the name of Colorado snell as vilely in
the public nostrils as the malodorous
insects to which it first gave birth.
Next to this pest comes the grasshop-
per. 1t is far more destructive than
the potato-bug, for the latter attacks
only esculents, while the grasshoppers
take anything that comes before them.
They 60 through a cornfield ikethe blast
of whirlwind, leaving nothing but
the bare stalks behind; wheat fields,
oat fields and grass arc shorn off by
them, close to the ground; and if the
grain has been gathered into shocks
they attack and demolish the garnered
sheaves with equal thoroughness. But,
while so utterly destructive, the grass
hoppers have not yet found their way
east of the Mississippiin any great force.
Colorado has been overwhelmed with
them; and Nebraska and Minnesota;
the plains east of Denver swarm with
them and the extreme western counties
of Kansas, which border the plains,
were last week fairly alive with them.
The wheat and oats crops in these coun-
ties had fortunately been gathered be-
fore they appeared; but every cornfield
in Western Kansas is to-day desolate
and bare. The devastating army was
slowly working eastward, at last ae-
counts, the farmers ahead of their line
of march were gathering the green ears
of corn from the fields to save them from
the insect marauders. The season is
probably too far advanced to look for
them, in this region this year, but how
long will it be, in the natural course of
things, before the grasshopper becomes
as great burden in Pennsylvania as
the potato beetle?
A third insect plague of the West,
but which has not YET reached us, is
the chinchbug. 1t may be heard of all
through Illinois, Missouri and Kansas,
where it has been terribly destructive.
The chinch-bugis is a bed-bug mounted
on wings-at least it has been so describ-
ed to us-and it goes for a corn-field
with the same vigor that distinguishes
its congener- 1t does not, however,
alight in the fiocks all over a field, as
the grasshopper dses, but attacks a
corn-field Systematically, be ginning at
the outside row, always, and advancing
to the second only when the first has
been destroye ed. Any traveller through
the State we have named will notice the
singular look of every corn-field he
comes to, caused by the ravages of this
insect. On one side of the field he will
sec from ten to fifty rows of corn COM
pletely destroyed, and the rest of the
field green and fiourishing, their ravag-
IS having been arrested before total de-
took place.
A correspondent of the n. Y. Times
mentions fourth plague-the erickets.
He says:
In Idaho the crickets have made one
Of their occasional tours, being, in sew
eral places, as dense as ever was the
Egyptian storm of locusts. The dis
gushing creatures form themselves into
hillocks under, apparently, every blade
Of grass, and move in myriads over
fields planted with cereals and escu-
lents. A field is preserved from the
ravages OF these pests by digging a
nench around it, the base being narrow
then widening as it slopes upward.
When the insects fall into this ditch they
cannot crawl up its sides owing to its
algle, and it is too deep for them to
;ump out, so that thousands of them
perish in their prison from hunger.
This same species of cricket has visited
Eastern Oregon for the first time in
many wears, and has inflicted much in
Jury on the crops. Millions upon mill
ions seem to move together, beng guild
ed in their course by a common i'm
pulse. l saw fields OF wheat at the base
Of the Blue Mountains which had been
cropped of close to the ground, and
arss- s,ss- ,ss-sasieae-staiks Of potatoes had
been devoured. The line of march Of
this army seem to be to the westward,
As met them from the elevated pla-
teaus of Umatella county to the Colum-
bia river. In their migrations they
cross streams. / saw millions Of them
1t once in the Umatella river, they hav-
ing apparently entered it with the in
.enLl0u Oi uudthuS 70 ASsn k'~'s>>-~'
They follow the course of tho current,
and on reaching tranquil water swim
toward the shore and recommence their
work on the first edible
vegetation they encounter.
The home of all these pests is in the
Rocky Mountains, and in the plains east
,f that range, where they deposit their
sggs to be Matched by the hot sun. From
here they spread eastward; and the
may be only the advance
courier of the legions of destructives
that are to follow in his wake. so far,
however, this part of the world has es-
capped from all but one of these infiie-
lions; and we may hope, at least, that
we shall never have the others to COM
plain of.
Greeley (Col.) has young lady who
the streets in an alpaca coat
and linen pantaloons.
al wouldn't have left, but the people
kinder egged me on" said man who
was asked why he quit his Kansas hsme