Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1885-06-18
GRASSHOPPERS.

IL Is stated lndJ large portion
of the foothill region of California
is not only threatened, but is being
devastated by such swarms of grass
hoppers that they amount to nothing
short of a plague. The line of
march has been westward across the
center of the state All authorities
and reports appear to agree in fixing
upon the desolate wastes of the
Sierra slopes as the birthplace of the
insects. There among the stones
and scrub the eggs lie hidden year
alter wear, until some peculiar eli
matte OF physiological condition
ethnologists are unable to agree up
on this point-brings them to life.
In Colusa county the most destruc
tive are of light buff when young,
growing a dark brown in a few
weeks, and reaching two inches in
length, with disproportionately long
legs and having great leaping pow
ers. Those in Ell Dorado county
are small, brown in color, have white
stripes around their body, and their
clicking noise is not unlike the
sound heard in a clock shop, where
at the same time hundreds of time.
pieces are ticking. A sample of
the pests, obtained on the other side
of the American river, near Sacra-
mento, were from one-fourth to
three-fourths of an inch in length,
and wingless. All agree, however,
that their general mode of progress
sion is to crawl or to hop, few using
their wings even when possessed of
them. The probabilities are that
the small and big insects are not
different kinds, but the young and
grown of the same species, the
Matching period being generally
about the end of April or the begin
ming of May; and the probabilities
are also that the "grasshopper" are
not grasshoppers at all, but locusts
of the genus captenus femurrubrum,
from the length and strength of the
jumping legs and the color of the
insects
From Trigo, San Joaquin county,
come discouraging accounts. What
the drouth has spared the grasshop-
pers are taking. E. Drais, who lives
four and one-half miles east of Far
mington, has 100 acres of wheat,
but the grasshopper came down a
little creek leading into the field and
took every LEAF and stalk until not
a green thing on their track was
left. The same informant says that
all winter-grown grain in his section
of the country, whether wheat or
barley, has been entirely cut off by
the locusts The Maryville Demo-
crat states that a farmer in that
neighborhood has lost about twenty
five acres of wheat by them, eaten
off close to the ground, and that
others are threatened. Last night
an army Of grasshoppers invaded
the agricultural lands ten miles from
Oroville on the Chico road. They
raided one farm and annihilated
eighty acres of grain in short order.
Grasshoppers have appeared in lone
Valley in such numbers as to amount
to Il scourge. The grain crop, which
only promised about half yield be-
fore, is now likely to be utterly
ruined. At Folsom the grasshop-
pers are numerous and are destroy
ing everything within reach. The
Natoma Company has a force Of
about fifty men continually fighting
them, and 500 pounds were captured
one day, which they offered for sale
at FIVE cents sack, being the cost
of the sack. AT Zeinwaldt's place
they are brushing them into the
ditch, and they are so thick that you
cannot see the water. One man
says that they visited his place and
did over $4,000 worth of damage in
one day. Mr.. Cashier of Sheridan,
Placer county, has said that there
the grasshoppers numbered five to
every stalk of wheat.
A farmer Of Latrobe had a fine
field of 200 acres of barley, and in
less than twenty-four hours after the
hoppers reached it there was not the
slightest vestige of the crop left,
even the roots, and the ground the
next day looked as if it had just
been pIowed aud narrowed. lie
says in the neighborhood of Latrobe
and White Rock the stencil arising
from the dead bodies of the hoppers
that clog up the running streams is
more offensive than the worst aggre-
cation Of slaughter-houses. The
country for miles around, usually at
this time of the year covered with
long grass and bedecked with wild
flowers, presents a most desolate APP
pearance, and looks as though it had
been swept by fire. The large far