Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1877 — THE GRASSHOPPERS. [ARTICLE]

THE GRASSHOPPERS.

A Gentleman Wlio Bag Been Cultivating Their Acquaintance Thinks They Will Not Ravage the Country to Any Great Extent This Year. Prof. Cyrus Tliomas, of the Board of United StatcsEntomological Commissioners, passed through Chicago the otlier day, and was interviewed by a Times reporter, with the following result: “I came direct from St. Paul,” said Prof. Thomas. “On the same train were several persons direct from what is considered the native habitat of the grasshopper in the far Northwest. One was a Mr. Holbrook, who is pasturing sheep north, of Fort Shaw, on the Dearborn river. He has been in that section for three years, and has, within the last two weeks, passed over the section between Fort Benton and Dearborn river. With him also came Mr. George Gluck, of lowa, who came direct from Fort Walsh, in British America, and who has been iu that region for several years as interpreter, and who recently was at Woody mountains, where Sitting Bull is. ‘ 1 Both of those gentlemen assert very positively that the grasshoppers are nothing in comparison with the numbers seen there year before last. I have also seen two persons within the last three days who had just arrived from Tongue river and the Yellowstone. They make the same statement. In addition, several soldiers from various points in tliat section, returning home, make the same statements. I am, therefore, well satisfied that there will be no general invasion this season from the Northwest. Flying locusts may be seen going northward ; in fact some have already been seen at two or three points, and a few came down last Thursday north of Sioux City. But I do not think any serious danger is to be apprehended from these. ” The Professor gave some account of his travels in the Northwest. It was about a month ago that he started out on a grasshopper hunt. Pie lias been scouring around in Nebraska, lowa and Minnesota, and appears to have made a very thorough examination of the country, and picked up a good deal of grasshopper information. In Nebraska, except in the river counties, most of the grasshoppers are dead, and the survivors will not, he thinks, be able to do more than 5 per cent, damage to the growing crops. In lowa the young grasshoppers are mainly confined to a few counties in the northwestern part of the State. In certain localities they are sufficiently numerous to desolate the fields, if they are allowed to get their growth and go to ravaging for a livelihood. The Professor visited some seven or eight counties in Minnesota where the outlook for this year’s crop is very discouraging. The farmers are disheartened, and some of the farms have been abandoned to the weeds. This apparently doomed district is situated in the southwestern quarter of the State, and embraces a strip of country from thirty to fifty miles wide and seventy-five miles long. Prof. Thomas takes a very cheerful view of the grasshopper question, and believes the problem, so far as it relates to the young insect, has been solved. He says that by anotlier year the farmers will know Jiow to employ most effectively the various devices invented for the destruction of the pests. In his late tour he found that some farmers had used tar far more successfully than anytliing else, while others had driven all their young ’hoppers into “ last ditches” dug for their interment. In Cherokee county, lowa, tlie farmers estimate that they have destroyed, in ditches alone, at least 13,000 bushels, wliile 30,000 bushels of the insects have perished from too much tar in one of tlie comities or Minnesota.-