Morning journal and courier., 1881-05-10
f5onrnaI all0 Gotuie1.
Tuesday Morning. May 10. 1881.
THE LOCUST PLAGUE.

What the locusts will do in the far West this summer is unknown. and, sad to say, any way of preventing or greatly lessening their ravages is unknown, though much time and money have been spent in the effort to find one One of the plans which has been proposed for the destruction of the pests is to burn over the areas in which they breed while they are in the 1arva state It is pointed out, however, that this plan, besides entailing great labor and expense, would en- counter other practical difficulties of an in superable character. Even if it were pos sible to burn over the whole region upon which the patches of egg deposits are scat tered, presenting as it does superfcies of half million square miles, there would be no certainty of exterminating the pest. There are few districts occupied by young Iocusts which the flames would traverse without i leaving gaps and unburned patches, since in almost all the prairies plains there are in numerable little barren tsbreaks'' or depres- sions and it is precisely on these spots that the eggs are laid. Thus in any event very large portion of the eggs would escape, and under the most favorable conditions the re-
 
 rate to the labor and money expended. Thus, in northwestern Iowa, where the utmost pre- cautions were taken to give the plan of burn ing the prairies fair trial, the undiminished hordes of young grasshoppers which after ward laid waste the wheat fields gave conclu- sive evidence of failure
 By order of Congress, Messrs. Riley, Pack ard and Thomas have been studying the To- cust question, and their report, which comes down to the year 1880, is interesting, though they can give no hope of exterminating the pests, or, indeed, of greatly lessening their ravages. In the opinion of MT. Thomas, who has made a prolonged and careful study of the matter, the only feasible method of checking the ravages of the locust is to en- courage an agricultural population to settle in the very home of the species Such emi- grants, from necessity, would be forced to wage constant warfare against them. By stirring the soil, their nests would be dis turbed; by destroying the young, their numbers would be diminished; and as ir- rigation would, in these regions, be indis- pensable, the effect of dry seasons on the crops would not be so sensibly felt as is the case at present The possibility, more- over, of inundating, to considerable extent, the egg deposits by winter supply of water would tend to arrest propagation The fact, too, that the breeding grounds of the locust are mainly situated in the limited agricultural areas is adduced as further ar gument in favor of this remedy. It is true, however, that large sections would still be left where locusts would breed, and from which they would pour down on the nearest cultivated districts, such as the western counties of Colorado
 All thhis is not cheering, but it is what was to have been expected. It is not proba- ble that the ingenuity of man will ever pre- vail against such plaques, which have come at various times to all the grand divisions of the earth. Though the locusts have not been exceedingly abundant and destructive in the West for the past few years the time will doubtless come again when they will be.