The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-12-04
IF the juicy. green wheat. they come cvary

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year.
1t is hard to realize what terrible thing
such an invasion is. The locusts appear in
great swarms, which often darken the sun
if they fly between you and 1t. Thy light
on everything green and begin eating. The
branches of the trees bend down with their
weight and you can hear the swapping of
their jaws as they crunch the leaves.
They will strip an orchard in a night They
often eat the flesh from the fruit, leaving
the stones of the peaches hanging to the
bare branches. They are capricious in their
feeding and all choice trees or those which
have been especially cultivated are sure
to be eaten. They will clean the crops from
the fields, eating the grain down TO the
ground. Sometimes they will take the green
wheat from one side Of the road and pass
by that on the other, and they sometimes
fly on and on for days over rich fields to
feed on those beyond. The next swarm may
eat that which is left
1t seems funny to think of these locusts
stopping railroad trains, but l have been
told again and again that this is the case.
They come in such numbers that they cover
the tracks. The cars crush them The
rails become greasy, and the wheels spin
round without touching the rails and with
out moving the cars onward. AT such times
the rails have to be sanded to get the cars
to run. In some of the towns it is said
that they even ate the paint off the houses.
THE BABY LOCUSTS.
This pest Of the locust has been so great
that the Argentine government has been
spending large sums of money to get rid of
them Among other things, they have sent
to the United States for Prof. Lawrence
Bruner, of the University of Nebraska, to
come here to investigate the subject and
to give them advice. Mr.. Bruner is one of
the best authorities Of the world on locusts,
and it is from his report, which has just been
received, that l get much Of my information.
The Argentine locusts look very much like
grasshoppers. They are very prolific, and
the greatest damage is caused not by those
which come in swarms, but by the young
locusts which follow. AS the locusts move
over the country they lay their eggs in the
ground. Each female locust makes a hole
in the ground and lays about one hundred
eggs and a month or so later these turn
into one hundred young locusts, who crawl
out and begin their march over the country.
Their parents have pretty we'll cleaned up
the crop The babies start out to eat what
has grown up in the meanwhile. They can
not fly far at first, and they crawl along,
eating up everything as they go. They
cover the ground, crawl over the fences and
sweep the country of everything green.
In a few weeks they grow wings and then
fly onward to other feeding grounds. No
conception can be formed of the enormous
numbers of these locusts. In one year six
teen tons of eggs were destroyed in one
place. Billions of eggs are now being dug
out Of the ground and crushed, and to-day
the Argentine farmers are lighting for their
life with the locusts.
The methods of discriminating them are
many and costly. Thousands of dollars are
spent every year to kill them. At the time
of an invasion all the farmers must turn
out and destroy them. They are caught in
traps of corrugated iron. They are scooped
up with scrapers and killed; poisons are
used and the grass plants and weeds are
sometimes sprinkled with arsenic, kerosene
and creosote. They are caught in bags,
driven into bitches and are killed in all sorts
of ways. Nevertheless, in 1886 it was esti-
mated that $50 100000 worth of wheat was
thus destroyed in two states of the Argen-
tine This impoverished the farmers of
these states, and the national government
spent $10,000000 that year in giving them
seed wheat.
AS to what is to be the future no one can
tell. If it is true that the locusts are to
come every year 1t will be long time be-
fore the Argentine can have a serious per-
manent effect upon the wheat market of
the world. Still the invasons up to this
have not extended very far south, and it
may be that the new wheat regions will not
be aftected by them.
FRANK G. CARPENTER