OCR Text |
Show Locust Plague Seen In Sardinia Island A mass of locusts, twenty-eight miles long and two and a half miles wide, is reported advancing on the crops near Crostano, Sardinia, Sar-dinia, and relief officials are rushing rush-ing vehicles to the island to help fight the plague of insects. The locusts are really "grasshoppers." "grass-hoppers." In years gone by, vast bodies of these insects swept from one region to another, in swarms so dense as to darken the sun. They fed on grass and herbage, consumed crops and pastures as if iby fire and even stripped .bushes .bush-es and trees of foliage and of baTk. In time, they caused extensive exten-sive local famines, sometimes resulting re-sulting in the loss of thousands of human lives and vast numbers of grazing animals. Grasshopper plagues have -occurred in ithe United States, especially espe-cially west of the Mississippi River. Riv-er. The great plagues of 1856 and 1874 caused widespread ruin, but entomologists pointed out that the best defense is the cultivation, of land which destroys ithe eggs and young by late and early plowing. While grasshoppers sometimes are harmful locally in the West, extended ex-tended plagues are not expected to reappear. |