Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1879 — The Grasshoppers. [ARTICLE]

The Grasshoppers.

The description which the Tiflis Vjestwik gives of the devastation by grasshoppere of Elisabetpol and other districts of Southern Siberia, is really appalling. The grasshoppers did not

com* in dense clouds, sweeping down cm the Adds like hail stones; on the contrary, they put in their appearance so gradually that, in the beginning they caused only curiosity. But they steadily increased in number, and when the fields and gardens began to look bare, when the trees and plants stood covered with grasshoppers instead of leaves, people began to realize that a plague was upon them. Candles were lit, processions were made, the priests prayed in public for deliverance from the plague, and all the means of a rude superstition were applied. Butin vain; the grasshoppers went on increasing at a fearful rate, and finally they invaded the towns. They filled the brooks and wells, making the water undrinkable; they settled so thickly in the streets that all passage was seriously embarrassed: they penetrated even Into the hoases, and filled chimneys, and ovens. At this point the civil authorities determined to supplant the clergy in dealing with the plague. All business was suspended, and tiil the members of the community, without distinction of rank, sex or age, were sent to kill grasshoppers, two poods, or about sixty pounds being about the average measure demanded of a person. By this means the plague seems to have been stayed, but now came its consequences, the famine and the epidemic.