The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1876-11-23
The Grasshopper and her Labors.

A Western editor, who has visited
the grasshopper stricken region of
northern Iowa and in Minnesota, says |:
We have taken square inch of dirt
from the ground, and found nearly q
Thousand g1asshopper eggs, each one of
which is dead sure to hatch ont. Grass
hopper eggs differ from hens eggs in
the circumstance that they never spoil.
Of single grasshopper egg that never
failed to connect.
The process by which grasshoppers
deposit their eggs may be interesting to
those who have never been out West to
grow up with the country, SO we will i'm
part the information that has cost much
labor and research. The eggs are
found about an inch below the surface
of the ground. The eggs are made by
the female 'hoppers. When she feels as
though she wanted to Tighten her bur-
den, she stands up on her narrative like
dog and begins to dig hole with her
north end. She works patiently until
she has hole in the ground about
the size of lead pencil, an
inch or 80 deep. The hole is so near
the subsequent end of the hopper that
should you take her by the nap of the
neck to pull her out of the hole, she
would break in the middle before she
would let go. After the hole is ready the
grasshopper spits on her hands and lays
down her bundle, which consists of ma
terial for a sac, which contains from
thirty to seventy-fiye eggs. She covers
up the hole and comes out looking as if
she had been run through q clothes
wringer, and with an appetite that
would shame free lunch ffend, and she
attacks anything that the he grasshop-
per has left in the neighborhood to eat
These eggs are laid late in the sum
mer, and they do not hatch till the
next spring. Nothing on earth except
these eggs from Matching. They may be
frozen as etiff as q mackerel, and they
will come out all right. They may be
drowned, and they still live. When the
proper time comes, when the granger is
looking the other way, and the sun be-
gins to shine for all, the eggs open, and
out comes tiny grasshopper, with his
mouth open, and he begins to eat in
minute, and keeps it up till death re-
lieves him. He will eat anything that
grows, and the larger he gets the more
he will eat. After few hours fooling
around on the ground, the young grass
hopper gets on bush or stalk, hangs on
by his feet, and his wings begin to un-
fold, aud in ten minutes he is ready to
fly, when he goes up in the air, winks at
the farmer with one eye, and goes to
Harvesting without money and without
price.
1t has been decided that the best way
to destroy grasshoppers is to wait till
spring, when he matches out and when
he comes out of the egg, to burn every
living thing on the prairie. With this
object in view the farmers are saving the
grass and everything that will burn, and
next spring the experiment. will be tried,
and the salvation of Minnesota and sew
hral other States depends upon the sue
less of the experiment. So fearful are
farmers that fires will be started this fall
that men are kept constantly on the
watch to prevent fires, and should any
man start q fire there now the people
would be so enraged that they would
shoot him as quick as they would a
murderer.