Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1875 — More About the Grasshopper. [ARTICLE]

More About the Grasshopper.

An Omaha corresjKmdent of the Chicago Tribune writes to that paper as follows, under date of June 22 • ' I was astonished to read, among your editorial notes of yesterday, that “it is a curious fact that, while the grasshoppers came from the southwest last year they are departing to the northwest this year,” etc., or to that effect. Now the fact is that these insects did not come from the New Mexico plains last summer, as every citizen of Nebraska and Dakota well knows, but they did come, on the contrary', from tin* north and northwest, straight from the British Possessions. The following extract from a newspaper hints at the true version of his habits: “ The first thing in this connection that we are bound to notice is, that the grasshopper moves in obedience to no ascertainable regular rule; no general law. He is probably native to the region north of Salt Lake, and thus far has visited Nebraska only at internals of several years. What brings him liere at all ? He gets on well enough for several years at a time without visiting us. Besides there are a thousand miles of good grass between us and liis native seat, and there are all the forests and glades of the mountains, of the uninhabited Yellowstone Valley, the plains of all British America anil the whole Pacific slope. Why, then, does he occasionally come into Nebraska? Why does he go southeast to Missouri, instead of due east to Illinois and Ohio? And, more strangely still, why does he passover Nebraska without lighting, as he did three years ago, and disappear forever, so that no man can tell whither he has gone?” It is a fact, whether curious or otherwise, that the progenitors of this identical “ Missouri flock” (as it is called here, owing to the circumstance that it mainly hatched out in that State this spring) devastated, or rather pastured in, West-Cen-tral British America three summers since, its progeny visiting Northern Dakota and Minnesota two years ago; the third generation descending upon Nebraska last sum--mer, destroying it, and depositing its eggs in Missouri, the southeast corner of Nebraska "and the eastern part of Kansas last autumn. This, spring the offspring (fourth generation) laid waste the region last above alluded to until about the "middle of June, when they arose and flew in a direction precisely opposite to their course last year—northwest. The column was 120 miles east to west, extending from Central Nebraska to a point somewhere between Council Bluffs and Des Moines, in lowa. They began to cross the Platte in countless millions on June 14 (a few small swarms had previously gone north), and had not entirely'* finished their passage over that river until June 21, seven clays later. They travel at a s]K*ed of about 13 miles an hour, or nearly 130 miles flight per day, average. Their vanguard is now 900 or 1,000 miles northnorthwest of Omaha, and still advancing. Would it not be useful to follow this retreating host into its northern fastnesses and track its movements for a few y'ears in that vast wilderness, where it has formerly' pursued its devious wanderings, unheralded and unknown, except as it occasionally emerges into the haunts of civilization, anil is recognized in the newspaper-world for a few years, only to disappear again soon and be forgotten ? In 1867 or 1868 a swarm fully as large as this one visited this section from the British regions (probably' by' the same successive steps), disappearing the next year in the direction from which it came; but was little talked of East as the country was then sparsely settled.