GRASSHOPPERS.

Waikato Times, Volume 2537, Issue XXXI, 13 October 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

GRASSHOPPERS.

A New York Telegram reporter was providentially allowed a brief chat with 11 Kansas Grasshopper man recently. He said That's tlio kind of insect that devastated a good part of the South ia 1874:, and spread famine far and wide. Talk about war and paragrapbers ! They can't compete with grasshoppers. They get in their fine work, and can discount everything' outside of cyclones." The speaker held in hi* hand a little box with a glass lid containing the dreadod bug: It had red legs and plate glass wings. It was killed ten years ago. " I kept it as a souvenir of the grasshoppers of 1874. Lord, but that was a time. I lost every blessed thing I had growing then, and had one of the best farms in Kassas. It was one of the finest days of the year. We were sitting on the stoop when my Maria, a child of eight, said :—" Say, clad, look at that funny red cloud with silver edges. It looks as if it was alive. Sakes alive, so it does ! gays the hired man. Look how fast it moves. My wife grew frightened, too, and the children huddled together closely. A strange dread came over us all as wo looked at the queer moving cloud. It came awhoopin', making a big noise and growing louder till it filled the whole sky, although it was miles away. It got black, but round the edges there was a silvery flickering that was mighty purty. "My God ! It's grasshoppers !" said my wife, who could see farther than me. Sure enough, it was the grasshoppers. They flew at r ice-horse speed, and coon we could see their red legs, and it got as dark as night, while thsy whirled nrouud above our heads and finally settled down a foot thick all over the the farm. My wife tuck the hysterics then*and thar, and cried like a child skeert to death. Soon the hoppers began to crawl among our feet and we had to club them off the stoop. Bushes and trees broke under them with their weight, and when you met the column, it divided on every side till you were standing up to the knee in the living mass. People met them with long clubs, built barricades and fire.l among them with guus, killiug millions, but it was only a drop iu the bucket. Nothing but the power of the Creator could stop them, and at last people left thein along. Freight trains were struck by 'em. One day they formed iu column and suddenly started on their march. Thye didn't leave a single thing but the fences aud bhdies of trees, The country looked as if it had been in the hand of an earthquake. They marched on through Missouri and Arkansas till they came to Texas. By this time the winter was coming on and the early frosts froze 'em solid. They had laid thsir eggs, however, before they left, and next spring the fields were alive with young hoppers. We killed carload on carload of them, but the more we killed the more they multiplied. Every one was in terror till the next harvest, when suddeuly they all rose and skipped the couutry and went South. It appears they never eat the herbage where they are born, but move to some other plw. on their work of destruction. The third year more appeared, hut the fourth year we could not And • me. Then farmers got into the way of killing off grass-hoppers iu the egJ, and that settled them.