Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American FrontierThroughout the nineteenth century, swarms of locusts regularly swept across the continent, turning noon into dusk, demolishing farm communities, and bringing trains to a halt as the crushed bodies of insects greased the rails. In 1876, the U.S. Congress declared the locust "the single greatest impediment to the settlement of the country." From the Dakotas to Texas, from California to Iowa, the swarms pushed thousands of settlers to the brink of starvation, prompting the federal government to enlist some of the greatest scientific minds of the day and thereby jumpstarting the fledgling science of entomology. Over the next few decades, the Rocky Mountain locust suddenly -- and mysteriously -- vanished. A century later, Jeffrey Lockwood set out to discover why. Unconvinced by the reigning theories, he searched for new evidence in musty books, crumbling maps, and crevassed glaciers, eventually piecing together the elusive answer: A group of early settlers unwittingly destroyed the locust's sanctuaries just as the insect was experiencing a natural population crash. Drawing on historical accounts and modern science, Locust brings to life the cultural, economic, and political forces at work in America in the late-nineteenth century, even as it solves one of the greatest ecological mysteries of our time. |
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Page xviii
... living hail, driven by papery wings rather than a howling wind. This much we know from newspaper accounts: The sunlight dimmed, and the air took on the thick veil that he associated with the smoke of a prairie fire. The roaring crackle ...
... living hail, driven by papery wings rather than a howling wind. This much we know from newspaper accounts: The sunlight dimmed, and the air took on the thick veil that he associated with the smoke of a prairie fire. The roaring crackle ...
Page xix
... living blanket of locusts. In the doorway, he crushed one locust after another underfoot, until the ground was slick with their ruptured bodies. Behind him, the garden was in shreds and the limbs of the willow tree by the house nearly ...
... living blanket of locusts. In the doorway, he crushed one locust after another underfoot, until the ground was slick with their ruptured bodies. Behind him, the garden was in shreds and the limbs of the willow tree by the house nearly ...
Page xx
... living wildfire, consuming fifty tons of vegetation per day to fuel a typical swarm. Finally, in the 1890s, to the relief of a beleaguered nation, the locust outbreaks subsided. But such remissions had occurred before, only to have the ...
... living wildfire, consuming fifty tons of vegetation per day to fuel a typical swarm. Finally, in the 1890s, to the relief of a beleaguered nation, the locust outbreaks subsided. But such remissions had occurred before, only to have the ...
Page 5
... living far up the numerous streams flowing into the Republican. If the winter should be as severe as that of seventy and seventy-one, and as deep snows fall, beyond a doubt hundreds will starve unless a supply of provisions sufficient ...
... living far up the numerous streams flowing into the Republican. If the winter should be as severe as that of seventy and seventy-one, and as deep snows fall, beyond a doubt hundreds will starve unless a supply of provisions sufficient ...
Page 28
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Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that ... Jeffrey A. Lockwood No preview available - 2005 |
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