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in this instance may have been overwintering nymphs of G. veletis that had
passed the critical point of their diapause period.} Kalm also remarks on the
fact that, when crickets were abundant, they could prove dangerous where
rattlesnakes abounded because the warning rattle of the serpents could be
rendered inaudible by their chirping.
On 7 September 1762, the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia,
lonathan Belcher, sent a dispatch from Halifax to the Lords of Trade in
London, referring to the loss of crops that year brought about by a combination
of drought and grasshoppers. Which species was (or were) concerned
is uncertain, but Piers (1918), who cites the report, strongly suspects
"Melanop/us attantis (Riley)," i.e., Iv!. sanguinipes sanguinipes (Fabricius),
but it may well have been M. femurrubrum femurrubrum (De Geer).
Up until the end of the eighteenth century, we know of no record of
orthopteroid insects from the north central or northwestern parts of North
America. Pritchett (1942), however, places the first observation by a European
of swarms of the Rocky Mountain locust, Afetanoptus spretus (Walsh),
in the Canadian West at 13 years before the establishment of the first
Red River Settlement in what is now Manitoba. As this latter occurred in
1812, the record, if correct, would be for 1799. It is probable that there would
have been swarms of locusts in the general area in 1799 to give rise to those
that were actually reported in 1800, but there is no written record of them.
Nevertheless, grasshoppers in general, and locust swarms in particular, were
surely familiar to the aboriginal Amerindians from time immemorial. As Bird
(1961) says, "These outbreaks must have undoubtedly occurred periodically
for centuries." He supports this by reference to the vast numbers of grasshoppers
frozen in the glaciers of Montana (Gurney 1953a; Gurney and Brooks
1959).
The early part of the nineteenth century saw a slow growth in knowledge
of the orthopteroid insects of Canada and adjacent regions in two different
ways. On one hand, the spread westward of European settlers (and the
accompanying introduetion of agricultural and horticultural systems that had
not previously existed in the West) led to reports on swarms of locusts, which
had become of great economic significance, rather than mere matters of
curiosity. On the other, a beginning was made, mainly in the East, on the
collection and scientific description of the insects.
The first swarms of locusts (acridid grasshoppers) to be reported from
the middle of the North American continent were not, as might have been
anticipated, in territory now forming part of the United States (although they
were doubtless present there at the time), but in the Red River valley of what
is now Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Alexander Henry, who was eventually
drowned in 1814 in British Columbia, recorded in his diary for 17 August
1800 that, on the "east shore of Lake Winnipeg, six leagues from the mouth
of the Red River... The beach was covered with grasshoppers which had
been thrown up by the waves and formed one continuous line as far as the
eye could reach; in some places they lay from six to nine inches deep, and
in a state of putrefaction which occasioned a horrid stench" (from Ms., lames
Campbell, Librarian of the Library of Parliament, Ottawa, in Packard 1878,
and Coues 1897; see also Morton 1937; Mitchener 1954a, 1954b; Bird 1961;
Riegert 1980).
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