The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1875-06-03

Buchanan and Cass counties, Missouri,
they have also begun to disappear.
Many artificial means for getting rid
of the insects have been tried, but none
of them has proved very successful.
What man is powerless to do for himself,
however, his allies, the birds, beasts,
reptiles, and parasitic insects do for him
in the extirpation of these pests. Chick
ems, turkeys and hogs devour the locusts
in great quantities; many kinds of birds
not only slaughter the insects but hunt
for their eggs in the ground; and toads,
frogs and snakes feast upon them. But
more effective than these or all other
agencies of destruction, except the
climate, Prof. Riley considers the par
asitic insects, several of which he de-
scribes. OF these, some eat the eggs;
suck it to dry shell; and others pierce
therein eggs which speedily develop into
gruas. The locust dies, and the grub,
in a few days, is a full grown fly, ready
to lay its share of fatal eggs. Attacked
by all these enemies and enfeebled by
the climate, the vast swarms of locusts,
so numerous at first as to frequently i'm
pede or stop railroad trains by their
crushed bodies, speedily vanish from the
earth. What, then, can the far less
numerous and more sickly young expect,
when, cut off from reinforcements, they
have to meet all these destroying
agencies in the spring?
But as yet the young insects hop south
eastwardly, as their fathers flew before
them, and eat with voracity worthy of
their sires. Although, being wingless,
they make little progress, the farmers
generally do not know how long their
movements will be thus delayed. One
other cause of panic and of o thousand
false reports should be mentioned. An
ordinary and comparatively harmless
grasshopper so closely resembles the
full grown Rocky Mountain locust in
general appearance that, by the unscien-
tific observer, the distinction would be
scarcely noticed. But the two differ en-
tirely, both in destructiveness and habits.
The locust does not live through the
winter, but lays eggs In the fall, which
hatch In the spring. The grasshopper,
on the contrary, hibernates, hiding it
self in some safe place, comes out as large
as ever in the spring, and then lays eggs.
Yet, In host of cases-no one can tell
how many-the appearance of the full
grown grasshopper from Ibis winter re-
treat is actually believed and widely re-
ported as the beginning of new invasion
of full grown locusts. But the devour-
ing locust never gets wings as early as
this, even in his far off home, and never
appears on our Western border earlier
than July ia years of emigration. The
harmless grasshopper is at this sea-
son full inch in length, with wings ex-
tended beyond his body. The devour-
ing locust is at this season wingless
little creature, smaller than a small
cricket, and nowhere half an inch long.
But thousands of poor farmers see in the
grasshopper the ghost of the dreaded
locust that died last fall.
There is not the least reason to appre-
bend another invasion this year, even
when the locusts of the mountains get
wings. Two migrations in successive
years, but never three, have occurred.
We have had two, the smaller prelimin-
airy invasion in 1873 and the larger in
1874, and no fears need be entertained
of another for several years But be-
cause of this mistake thousands of farm
ers who are really beyond all danger
have been panic-stricken, and any num-
Der of reports have been sent out that
"the grasshoppers are invading again.
w. M. GRosvENoR.
ST.. LOUIS, May 26, 1875.