The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-07-04
ABour rHE LoCusr CROP.


 Some of our contemporaries are very much worried over the locust question. and one rather befuddled editor wants to know how often the 17-year locust comes in seventeen years. He has apparently gotten an idea into his head that the To- custs are as cratic as a mules heels and are as likely to break out at unexpected times.
 Our editorial friend alluded to is not the only person to get confused on this sub ject, for there are others who have the same trouble to straighten out what seems to be an chronological tangle. The confusion all arises from the fact that there are in this country two entirely dis tinct families of locusts, or cicadas, one being Northern variety and the other Southern. This would cause no confusion if each family would confine itself to its own habitat. but they don't do it. Like the right.thinking human inhabitants of the Union they refuse to recognize sec tional lines, and thus 1t happens that they frequently lap over, and as the Northern ones appear once in seventeen years and the Southern species once in thirteen years it is easy to see how they may mix families and confuse people. As they are practically identical in size and appear ance no one can be surprised at the con- fusion caused by their appearance. nor is it strange that we often see them in numbers when. according to the calendar they are not due. True. the Northern in- sects are never as numerous here as they are in their own section. but enough of them breed here to cause confusion.
 It must naturally happen that the two varieties will appear at the same time and then we have an overcrop. This, we are told, occurred in 1885 and will occur again when the two periods fall on the same date. A late writer on the sub ject says the two crops will come up to- gether in POST. while another man who thinks he knows something of figures is certain that the conjunction will not oc- cur before the year 2327. Those who doubt these figures can work it out for them selves, but none of them will be here to test the correctness of theft calculations.
 It is a little odd that any one should undertake to estimate the number of the 17-year locusts turned loose this year, but one Horace Green, who is said to be quite an expert insectologist, calculates that there are about one thousand billions of them now loose. Of course a few extra millions. or few hundred millions, for that matter, wouldn't hurt, for no one is going to count them. neither will any one trouble to verify his further statement that the crop amounts to something like 225.O0o.oeo bushels" When a man goes to fooling with figures of such pro- portions he stands a good chance to fall down. Whether he is right or wrong doesn't matter much, though, for we can safely admit that there are lots of locusts, and not quarrel over the exact number. Another feature of the discussion is about their use as food. We have heard people insist that the locusts which John the Baptist ate when, as the Bible in- forms us. ''his meat was locusts and wild honey" was not the insect but the fruit of the heney-locust tree. This view arises from the fact that many persons are ignorant that the genuine cicadas are largely used as food. and 1t is evident that | Good intended them to be so used, for when He was giving Moses instructions for the diet of the Hebrews He used this language: ''Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind and the bald locust after his kind. and the beetle after his kind. and the grasshopper after his kind.'
 From this language we are safe in as- suming that not only the periodical cica- das, which we usually call Iocusts, might be eaten. but that the entire family of grasshoppers were included. Shakespeare alludes to ''the food that to him now is as luscious as lOcusts," which leads us to believe that such diet was not un- known in his day. It is well known that the Indians of this country eat them, as do the savages of all countries. What is more to the point is the fact that we'll informed men, medical as we'll as others, assert that they are not only a whole some but may be made palatable article of food. Would not the cultivation of a general taste for them just now help to down the meat trusts? They are cheaper than beef and chickens, at all events.