Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1875 — The Grasshopper Plague in Missouri. [ARTICLE]

The Grasshopper Plague in Missouri.

St. Louis, May 17. Prof. Riley, the State Entomologist, ftiys that the ravages in Western Missouri are indeed alarming. He explains that the young hoppers will not be ready to take the wing until the 15th of June. For a whole month the farmers of Missouri will have to stand the scourge. The only approximate relief that can be gained is through the war of extermination, and farmers all over the State are called on to fight them with rollers, ditching, burning, drowning and continued plowing. The professor recom mends to the State authorities to offer rewards for the destruction of the grasshoppers by the quantity. About the route of the swarms after becoming fullwinged there are the most contradictory opinions. The most probable and popular belief is that they will move westward, northward, and, to some extent, eastward from this State.

A large firm of wholesale grocers today received by express from the western part of the State a box, which, upon being opened, was found to be completely full of grasshoppers. Accompanying the package was a letter from a heaVy debtor, who said unless the hoppers were received in liquidation of his account he saw no way of ever paying his indebtedness, as these were all there was left, or in prospect, of the product of his section. All the wholesale houses of St. Louis are receiving letters by the hundreds from their Western Missouri creditors, declaring their total inability to meet their paper on account of the plague. The formation of a relief commission and a thorough organization for the work surely in prospect are already being agitated here,