Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1874 — The Grasshopper Plague. [ARTICLE]

The Grasshopper Plague.

The following description of these pests and their depredations is given by Rev. Richard Cordley, of Lawrence, Kan., in the Cengregatiithalist: The “ 'grasshopper region” extends from the Indian Territory on the south to Minnesota on the north, and from the arid plains of the Rocky Mountains on the west, whence they originate, to the Mississippi on the east. It is not often, however, that they reach the latter boundaries, as frost generally overtakes them on the way. This year, however, they are earlier than usual, and they reach the rivers before frost comes. So their ravffg’es this year will extend, with an occasional break and omission, over a region nearly 1,000 miles square. “ Their number is simply appalling. The national debt and the wonders of geometrical progression are left completely in the shade. ‘ Take your little pencil" while I give you the materials of a problem. An army of them is passing over my house as I am writing, going eastward. Looing up, the air is tilled, with them as high as you can see. The lower st rata looks like snow-flakes in the air. Higher up they looslike silver dust sprinkled on the sky. This immense multitude has been moving rapidly all day. On Saturday, two days ago, another army, equally vast, passed over the city southward, and were seven hours going over. - remember that the army extends, with a few breaks in the lifie, nearly 1.000 miles, and, while your pencil and figures inav fail, you can form some conception of the reality. Their destructiveness is as wonderful as their numbers. When they light they come down like a snow-storm, covering the ground. As as they strike they begin to eat, and they keep eating till food grows scarce, and then they move on. In some places their destructiveness is more complete than in others, as their stay varies from three days to-three weeks. They have excellent appetites and a wide range of diet. Onions, tobacco. peppers, cabbages, and other strong and pungent articles, are their favorites; but they can accommodate themselves to circumstances, and when these luxuI ties fail can thrive very well on such l suhjtantials as corn or "grass, or leaves ; of fruit or forest trees; -and even as a ‘. last resort they devour the twigs and i bark of the trees, and the stalks of the ' corn, as the hard tack of the campaign. The rapidity of their work is almost incredible. The great cornfields of these prairies seem to melt before them almost while you are looking at them; orchards and forests exhibit the baldness of winter, and the whole country looks as though a fire had passed over it. A farmer fold me he had 100 acres of corn in one field, so rank you could not see through it. The grasshoppers struck it abouLnoon. and in a few hours only bare stalks were standing." “It just melted away before my eyes,” he said. 'And what they have ’ done for him they have done for all. The bottom-lands of the

Kaw (Kansas) RiveF, which for 100 miles west of here are almost one unbroken corn-field, now show nothing but cornstalks. Where the com is mature they leave the ear and stalk. But where it is green they sweep the whole away. In this region much of the corn was about, ripe, and is safe. One hundred miles west of us the grasshoppers came earlier and there is absolutely no harvest. I drove several miles through fields on the Kaw bo|tom while the grasshoppers were working. The sound of their eating was as if a drove of cattle were in the field. In my own yard you could hear them distinctly eating among the trees.. At any hour or the night you could go to the door and hear the work going on. It took but a few days to. strip the trees of their leaves; the yards of their grass; the gardens of their plants, and the fields of their harvests. When food becomes scarce] they all rise together as if by word of command, and pass on “to freener fields,” if not to “ milder skies.” t is the best appointed army ever known. They move and camp and work in concert, as if directed by some common voice. They forage in the country as they move. If one of them gets hurt or killed, his companions at once eat him up. So they need neither baggage wagon nor stores, ambulance nor surgeon. The insect differs from the common grasshopper. In addition to its jump apparatus it is furnished with four white wings, which c’o not simply help it to hop, but on which it flies indefinite distances—miles —perhaps hundreds of miles. It is no doubt nearly identical with the locust of Scripture. ■. The humors of the campaign are not a few. At Topeka they said they “ate the peaches from the trees and then threw the stones at the people as they passed.” In Missouri they say “they stopped a train one morning, seized the daily papers, and there learning that a section had been missed by them turned back and finished the job.” Stopping the train is no joke. They have frequently piled themselves on the track so as to cause the driving wheels to stick on their broken bodies. The ladies have a special aversion to them, as they cannot walk out without capturing from fifty to two hundred and bringing them home. In church you can safely assume that every lady has a few score hidden in the folds of her robes. A sudden twitching of the- features, a clutching of the fingers, or a faint scream will indicate that one of these captives has “struck for liberty.” -