Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1895 — KILLS THE HOPPERS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

KILLS THE HOPPERS.

MACHINE THAT SLAUGHTERS 8,000 BUSHELS A DAY. Minnesota Scientists Tackle the Farmers’ Terror in a New Way— Canvas and Kerosene Send the Pests to Death. “Hopper-Doxers.” Minnesota scientists hare tackled the grasshoppr pest in a new way. Canvas and kerosene is the combination, before which the tiny hoppers go down to their death. Out there it is known per-dozer.” The State pays the’wqiflases of the slaughter, and the slaughter is terrific. Think, if you can, of 8,000 bushel baskets packed with hoppers. That was the average record in a day of killed and wounded insects at the height of the scourge. Dr. Otto Lugger, Minnesota’s expert on bugs, is the man who utilized the curious “hopper-dozer,” says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Why he calls it by that name it would be interesting to know. Perhaps it is because it sends the hoppers to their last sleep. He was invited to do something to rid the farms of their voracious brigades of hoppers early this summer. He found evidences of enough of them to kill all the crops in Minnesota. The rains helped to kill off some of them, but science had to do its share iu the extermination. In the neighborhood of Taylor’s Falls Dr. Lugger found a grass-hopper-infested district covering fifty or sixty square miles. The insects were descendants, he thought, of a previous generation which had made trouble in 1800. They were of the so-called pellucid or California variety. There happened to be a State appropriation for killing hoppers, and this was tunned over to the executioner. “I had 200 hopper-dozers built after the most approved fashion,” said Dr. Lugger to a correspondent, “and purchased sixty barrels of kerosene oil. All we asked of the farmers was that they run the machines. That they were anxious to do this Is shown by the fact that there was a fight for the machines. Every farmer In the section wanted one and wanted it at once. We could not get them built fast enough to supply the demand. The same thing was done at Rush City, Duluth and other points, although there were not as many of them furnished at these places. I estimate that these machines killed about 8,000 bushels a day during the time that they were all running. I do not think that this is exaggerated in the least, as there were over 400 of the machines, and at the end of a day’s work from three to ten bushels could be taken out of

each machine with a shovel. Just about one hopper in ten that dies does so in the machine, so you can see that my estimate is not a large one by any means.” “What is the nature of the machine?” he was asked. “It is something of the nature of an overgrown dustpan, and is made of tin. It is about eight feet long by two feet wide, runs on three small runners, and is drawn over the ground by a horse. At the front of the machine is a trough filled with coal oil, and behind this, at right angles, a piece of canvas rises to a height of three or four feet. As (his machine is drawn over the ground tfie hoppers jump into it, the canvas them from jumping over. They fall into the oil and that is the end. “Some of them strike the oil head first and die instantly. Others only touch it with their feet or bodies and are able to jump out again. It makes little difference in the end, however, as they cannot live over three minutes if they have even the

smallest drop of the oil upon their bodies. The fact that only those which get into the oil head first die instantly is the reason that such a small percentage of them are found in the pan at the close of the day's work. “Of course the hopper-dozers are bnly a makeshift. I am conducting experiments now which I hope will show me a much better way of getting rid of the pests than the very clumsy one of gathering them up on a dustpan. A little while ago I read in some paper that in certain counties in Colorado the hoppers were dying , in great numbers with some sort of a disease. I sent to the postmasters of a number of towns in that State asking them to send me some of the insects that were diseased. I received a large number, and there iA-uo doubt in my mind that they are really afflicted with a disease that is contagious in its nature. We are trying to find out if the insects which we have In this State are liable to this disease. If bo we will then know hbw to deal with them in a scientific manner.”

THE “HOPPER-DOZER,” BY WHICH 8,000 BUSHELS HAVE BEEN KILLED IN ONE DAY.

THE GRASSHOPPER.