The Weekly Times. “Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri.” MONDAY, MAY 20, 1867. THE LOCUST PEST.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 18, 20 May 1867, Page 116

The Weekly Times. “ Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri .” MONDAY, MAY 20, 1867. THE LOCUST PEST.

Quite a new feature in the history or the Colony is the wonderful increase--of the locust tribes during the past year or two, and we think altogether unaccountable. True it is that therehas always been a large number of the locust family in these islands, but until the last few years we had not heard of their committing havoc on the grdss. or pasture lands, and we were inclined, to the belief that they subsisted on. the ferns, and that agriculturists had little or nothing to fear from them,. Now, however, the case is quite different. They have increased to an unusual extent, so much so that clouds; of them may be seen at times travelling through the atmosphere from onedistrict to another, darkening the air for hours together; hill sides may be seen covered with them, and glistening in the rays of the sun like as many shells ; pasture lands too, where they have alighted, are devastated and found to he denuded of every blade of grass; and so numerous are they as they rise in the faces of travellers that horses will at times refuse to face them.

We have on a former occasion pointed out that domestic poultry,,, particularly turkeys, devour • them greedily, and thrive well on this kind of food —some hundreds of their ’carcases being found together in a single crop, to the almost exclusion of cither 1 kinds of food.' Pigs too, we are informed, devour a vast number of them,/ ami are -rapidly fattened These facts indicate the directib#in > which we must work for a remedy for the pest. More attention must be paid by oqr settlers to the raising' of poultry, and turkeys more especially? ' This will at least do something towards checking the progress of the locust plague, while it will turn it to’ a great extent into a source of profit instead of loss.-