Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1875 — A Kansas Farmer’s Account of the Grasshoppers. [ARTICLE]

A Kansas Farmer’s Account of the Grasshoppers.

Near Topeka, Kan., I talked with a farmer who planted a thousand acres of corn but did not gather an ear. Last year he sold corn for seventeen cents and this year he was shipping it from lowa at fl .25. He sat on the balcony mourning the utter destruction erf his crop. “ How aid they come—the grasshoppers?” I asked. “ They came like a shower, sir," he refdied. “Theycame in a great shower rom the west. They filled the air. They darkened the sun. They covered the stalk of com until it was black. Then they ate every leaf, ate the stalk down to the young ear and then ate the little ear too." “ Cob and all, sir?” “ Yes, cob and all. Why, don’t you see that 1,000 acres of com out there now?’’ he pxclaimed—“standing like broken whip-stocks?” “ What else did they eat?” I asked. “ Why, they ate every leaf off of the peach trees, ate the young peaches, leaving the stones, and there stood my trees leafless, bearing a crop of peach-stones. They ate little cottonwood limbs an inch thick; they ate my beets, turnips and onions clean down into the groundfollowed them out, leaving the rind —at® cigar-stubs, sir, and—— ’’ “Hold up!” I said, “ that’s too much; that’s ” “But it’s the solemn truth, sir. Why, one night I sat on the balcony with the engineer of the Santa Fe Road. The 'hoppers had piled up against the west side of the house three feet thick. It was a crawling, stinking, nasty pile. Th balcony was covered. I threw down a quid of tobacco and the hoppers covered it and ate it up in a few minutes, and when I put my foot on a pile of them the rest sailed in and ate the smashed ones up. Why, when I went to build my fires this fall the stoves wouldn’t draw, and, on examination to learn the cause, I found the flues full of ’hoppers. They filled the air with a horrid stench. They covered the pools and springs with their poisonous green excrescence and made the cattle sick, they made the hens and turkeys sick; and they fairly made me sick. Whv, I’ve seen them so thick on the railroad that they’d stop a train—grease the track till the locomotive wheels would roll over and over.” “ What became of them?" I asked. “ They flew east. They always flew in the daytime and ate at night. They went through my corn-field in a day, and the next day they were a half-mile to the east. ; . “And the trees?" “ Why, they all leaved out again, and many of them blossomed over again and tried to bear fruit, and did bear it till the frost caipe- In my trees you’d see dead peach-stones and pink blossoms—all together. Oh, it was a mournful sight, sir —dreadful!” and the farmer drew a long sigh.— Cor.'New York Sun.