all kinds of crops wherever they chanced to alight. In the new localities they would lay their eggs, and the young of the next season, after acquiring their wings, would migrate back toward the region whence the parent swarm had come the year before.
The entornologists of the investigating commission in the vear 1877 tell us that on a favorable day the migrating locusts “rise early in the forenoon, from eight to ten o'clock, and settle down to eat from four to five in the afternoon. The rate at which they travel is variously estimated from three to fifteen or twenty miles an hour, determined by the velocity of the wind. Thus, insects which began to fly in Montana by the middle of July may not reach Missouri until August or early September, a period of about six weeks elapsing before they reach their destined breeding grounds.” The appearance of a swarrn in the air was described as being like that of “a vast body fleecy clouds,” or a “cloud of snowflakes,” the mass of flying insects “often having a depth that reaches from comparatively near the ground to a height that baffles the keenest eye to distinguish the insects in the upper stratum.” It was estimated that the locusts could fly at an elevation of two and a half miles from the general surface of the ground, or 15,000 feet above sea level. The descending swarm falls upon the country “like a plague or a blight,” said one of the entomologists of the commission, Dr. C. V. Riley, who bas left us the following graphic picture of the circumstances:
The farmer plows and plants. He cultivates in hope, watching his growing grain in graceful, wave-like motion wafted to and fro by the warm summer winds. The green begins to golden; the harvest is at hand. Joy lightens his labor as the fruit of past toil is about to be realized. The day breaks with a smiling sun that sends his ripening rays through laden orchards and promising fields. Kine and stock of every sort are sleek with plenty, and all the earth seems glad. The day grows. Suddenly the sun's face is darkened, and clouds obscure the sky. The joy of the morn gives way to ominous fear. The day closes, and ravenous Iocust-swarms have fallen upon the land. The
