Year: 1874

For years past the Western districts of
our country have been subjected to an in
sect-plague infinitely worse than the cur
culio, the potato beetle, or any of the insect
enemies that bother us so. California has
had them TO some degree, but the unfortu-
nate Mormons in Utah have suffered more
from them than they, but this season Kan
sas, Nebraska, and Minnesota have been
overrun with them to such an extent that
from the last place we have appeals for
help as strong as came from burnt Chicago
or drowned-out Louisiana.


Few but those who have had actual ex-
perience in the locust or grasshopper plague
can have any idea of the suddenness with
which they fall on a poor fellow, or the
completeness with which they clean him
out. We have heard of cases where man
rich in the morning in farm crops, half
ready for the harvest, would be next to
beggar at night, the grasshoppers in that
short time not leaving single green thing.
All sorts of remedies have been suggested,
but the suddennesss with which they strike
prevents much being done.


But the editor of the american Naturalist
is out with remedy. 1t is certainly
complete one. It is to catch and eat the
grasshoppers as they in turn have eaten
our crops. He argues that there is nothing



decent, cleanly insects, living on the herbs
of the field as other fashionable brutes do,
and moreover there is already abundant
human testimony to show that they furnish
not only wholesome and delicious food,
but when properly prepared delicate titbits
that might tempt even the rigorous nature
of an anchorite. He does not indeed tell
us that the Digger indians in California
eat them, and perhaps this were as well,
for some of the philosophers tell us that
mans nature is in a great measure nodded
by the kind of food he eats, and it would
not do to suggest even the most remotely
that we could possibly do anything that
these very debased human beings do. True,
they eat, and we must eat. but for all it
would make us feel better did we but know
that the food we eat is altogether different
from that which supports them. But it is
not necessary to refer to the Diggers. st.
John the Baptist is said to have fed on To-
Gusts, and though. our sensitive English
historians have taught us that this was not
a orasshopper, but a tree-honeY locusts,
and not locusts and honey-there be
plenty of people who assert that it was in
deed the veritable jumping thing. The
Naturalist, however, tells us that among
the Arab chiefs there is nothing like grass
hoppers, and that Smillions of civilized





hoppers as the best of food.a But" it
proceeds, g not being willing to urge the
use of grasshoppers as food for Others,
without first trying them ourselves, we
may say that we have found the grasshop-
per. first killed by boiling water, and then
fried in butter. at leastas palatable as many
articles of food eaten by civilized people,"
1t is obvious that it is all in the idea, and
all that will be necessary in order to make
grasshopper cake 'Sgo" win be to organize
a society. The times are propitious.
They are no exciting societies now before
the people. Cremation has burned out.
Free love, in view of recent events, will
die. Horse meat societies never got foot
hold on our soil, and the mushroom par
ties have become hardly popular even in
England. A 'tSociety for the Propaga-
ton of the Grasshopper as food for the
million is one of the most feasible things
in the world, and we recommend the pro-
ject to our philanthropists.-Fogmey'
Press,