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no wheat or next to none was raised in 1875. Many got a crop of potatoes,
but the country was on the verge of starvation and all the seed wheat had
to be brought in from Minnesota." This did, however, result eventually in
a long-term benefit. The utter reduction of seed stocks in Manitoba led to
the replacement of inferior varieties by Red Fife, the wheat that placed
Canada "on the wheat map of the world" (Morton 1937). A note on the
Manitoba "Grasshopper Seed Grain Mortgages" of 1876 is given by Painter
(1941). Nevertheless, at the time, the locust outbreaks of 1873-1875 were
directly responsible for a great reduction in immigration by settlers during
1876 to the Canadian prairies (Morton 1937, 1938), which was an embarrassing
set-back to the youthful federal government who had just expended a
great deal of effort and treasure in attempting to encourage settlement of
the West. "The great tide of immigrants" that was expected "refused to come
to a land cursed with one of the plagues of Egypt" (Morton 1937).
The Manitobans for the most part remained resolute despite adversity,
and the cornerstone for the old Winnipeg City Hall was laid on 17 August
1875. Beside the stone was buried a bronze casket (it would be called a "time
capsule" nowadays) containing various contemporary articles regarded of
interest to posterity. Included were "three photographs of Manitoba scourge,
'grasshoppers,' 1875" (one actually dating from 1874, is shown in Plate I,
A), "a [glass "Preston Salts"] bottle containing samples of the scourge of
Manitoba 'grasshoppers' in spirits" and sealed with red sealing-wax (Plate I,
B, C), and "a box containing heads of wheat from a field partially destroyed
by grasshoppers, 1875" (Begg and Nursey 1879:122-123). When recent
excavations were being undertaken for the extension of the City Hall, the
casket was exhumed 15 February 1962 (together with another buried 19 July
1884, when the cornerstone of the "new" City Hall was laid) and the objects
recovered (Anonymous 1962a, 1962b). The "grasshoppers," although the
alcohol had, of course, dried out, were in an excellent state of preservation.
Most of them were Melanoplus spretus, although other species were
represented.)
The year 1875 saw the last of the really serious crop losses to the Rocky
Mountain locust in the region treated here. There was an exodus of locusts
from Manitoba in 1876 and no problem there in 1877. Packard (1878) shows
1877 as being an unimportant locust year in "British North America," as
well as in the adjacent United States from Minnesota westward. Locust flights
are shown for 1877 in Manitoba, present Saskatchewan, the Dakotas, and
Montana by Packard (1881), but, for 1878, a few in the last two named
locations only (see also Packard and Riley 1881). By 1879, activity seems
to have become reduced to a small amount in the western Dakotas and in
) The bottle (capacity 38 mL, height 53 mm, greatest circumference 135 mm) eventually made
its way to Saskatoon, where it was examined by our former colleague Dr. R. L. Randell. We
are grateful to him for the photograph and for information regarding its contents. Besides
a male and a female Melanoplus spretus there were one male M. sanguinipes sanguinipes
(Fabricius), one each of second-, third-, and fourth-instar nymphs of one or other of these,
one female Cratypedes neglectus (Thomas), and one female "Mormon cricket," Anabrus
simplex Haldeman. The bottle also contained some newspaper clippings. Bottle and contents
were returned to the City of Winnipeg at the end of August 1970, and were placed in the
city archives (W. A. Quayle, City Clerk, Winnipeg, in lift. to R. L. Randell, l.IX.)970).
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