The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1888-11-07
BIG GRASsROPPERS.

! BIG GRAssRoPPERs.
Stories That are Told Concerning Them IL
| the West.
(From the Chicago Trbune)
No fiction can approach the truth re
garding grasshoppers in Minnesota wher
the plague is on. At 81. or even so cents
bushel, the grasshoppers have been, Al
least four years out of the last twelve, S
more profitable crop than wheat e7el
was along the incomparably fertile val
leys and uplands of the Minnesota River
More than one such bounty has drained
the treasures of prosperous counties tc
the last dollar within week after it was
offered. The first visitation OF the pest
siace early in the SOS was in 1887. Ir
the latter part OF June the farmers began
to grow anxious, for reports from DakoSs
were to the effect that the young crop OF
grasshoppers, having devoured every
green thing, including the leaves on the
trees, were preparing to deluge the East.
July 10, the advance of the destroyer
was heralded from the Big Stone lake
county. His path was desert, with
out an oasis to relieve the eye or succo.
the furnishing. In the afternoon OF July
Is, the farmers along the river bottom
in NicolIet and Blue Earth counties saw
the sun go ont like q candle suddenly
e1tinguished.
'sGrasshoppers!" That was all they
said.
The cornplow was stopped where it
was; the scythe engaged in moving a
swarth through the weeds around the
now neyer-to-be-hsrvested wheat field
dropped from the farmers hand; further
farm operations were purposeless-
everybody abandoned all other pursuits
and watched the approach OF the omln-
GUS gray clouds.
The front edge of the cloud passed
over Nicollet county, and the centre OF
the gray, granulated, swirllng mass hung,
seeming undecided, mile above the
earth. Then half dozen fat, insolent
fellows, with psunches distended with
Dakota good living, dropped down and
folded their wings. Now it began to pour.
Never did the heavens precipitate more
disgusting, disastrous torrent. People
fed to their houses and shut the doors
and windows. The grasshopper is a
nasty pest. He lives upon sweet green
blades of wheat and corn, and expecto-
rates tobacco juice upon the slightest
provocstion.
Half an hour of the storm and the de-
stroyer had arrived. During the remain
ing hour before sundown thousand
acres of waving wheat had disappeared
utterly the third day the most beautiful
sight fertile western farms afford-luxu-
rant, undulating fields of corn-was
into scene of utter desols-
tion; only the ragged stumps remained.
The meadows, tame and wild, went next.
and then the leaves on trees and shrubs
"Now," said the farmers, "we shall be
rid of you; there is nothing left for you
to ear, and to eat is your one mission on
earth
But the farmers had forgotten that
the grasshopper has two missions on
earth; the other is to propagate and
multiply his species. 1t is a duty he is
proud of and never neglects. If the
verdure OF locality he is infesting dis
appears before he has reached the prop
agating stage he moves a league onward
and fuIflls his other mission. The two
missions do not interfere with each
other; when he is ready to devote him
self to the business of raising family,
he stops eating-whatever he puts forth
his hand to do he does with will.
The Edmunds bill does not apply to
the grasshopper. He is homogeneous
pest, but his helpmeet is the acme of
fecundity. An inch below the surface
she leaves an egg fully an inch long
and as large as her own body. 1t is more
than an egg-it is at least loo eggs, each
the size and much the color and shape
of grain of rye, packed snugly together
in tough membranous cover
ing, which deties the elements. A dozen
DAYS of sunshine in the following May
and these eggs increase the pest fifty fold.
If blade Of wheat or q stalk of corn
escaped the parents no remissness OF the
kind will remain q reproach to the chill
dren. Until they have flown to other
telds not a green thing will appear on
the surface of the earth. A hundred
little grasshoppers, scarcely bigger than
q flea, viii watch for the appearance OF
each blade of wheat, and to each hill Of
corn there will be thousand. The field
in time is as black as the plowed fields
of October and swarms with pest that
cannot be fought or destroyed.
TO prevent, if possible, the visitation
OF young grasshoppers, it has been the
custom to offer bounties on old grass.
hoppers before the eggs are laid. In 1876
NicolIet and Blue Earth counties offered
bounties of So per bushel soon after the
pest arrived from Dakota. That amount
did not look large at first. There are
something like 2O, 900 adult grasshoppers
in bushel. Who would undertake to
devote himself exclusively to the de-
structlon OF grasshoppers tor consider
alton of less than $ per 10000? That is
the way it looked to the county officials.
On the third day after the offer was made
they changed their minds. German
drove up to the front door of the Nicollet
county court house at noon with his
farm wagon loaded with sacks of some
thing. 1t was not wheat, for the load
had q horrible smell. The sacks were
drenched with an offensive brown liquid,
streams of which trickled through cracks
in the wagon box. 1t was cargo of
grasshoppers. There were thirty bushels
of them. The German drew $50 in cash
from the treasurer and drove home in q
allc,n to set all his children and hired