Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

A correspondent of the Chicago Journal is denouncing the armies of grasshoppers that are so abundant on the prairies this season. They differ from European, being horse-headed, and winged like the African locust, and are the worst kind of those plagues. They are said to have increased very much within the last three years, and threaten to become a very serious evil.
The ravages of these insects are somewhat mitigated by the havoc made among them by the prairie fowls, which eat them greedily, and thus destroy enormous numbers during the season, and prevent their increase to a proportionate extent. It is recommended in reference to the usefulness of those birds in this particular, that the killing of them should be prohibited by law until the harvest is ended-say between February and September.
The grasshoppers have in time past caused the great calamities of famine and pestilence in the world. In July, 591 and 1543, they ravaged Europe in military order; 800,000 men perished by famine and pestilence. They wasted France A. D. 874 and 1842, when their leaders constantly flew a day before the host and marked the place to be devoured. These first appeared without wings, then with two wings and lastly with four. They were blown into the English channel, and were thrown on the beach in such numbers that the stench caused a pestilence.
The immense extent of our soil, its great productiveness and diversity of crops, would seem to forbid the possibility of a general famine ever happening in this favored land. But if such should ever be the case, it would most probably be brought about by the agency of these terrible scourges.