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
... never before seen—what formed the cloud that was now filling the horizon. We can readily imagine his growing fear as another ten insects pelted him, then hundreds fell like living hail, driven by papery wings rather than a howling wind ...
... never before seen—what formed the cloud that was now filling the horizon. We can readily imagine his growing fear as another ten insects pelted him, then hundreds fell like living hail, driven by papery wings rather than a howling wind ...
Page xxiii
... never seen a life form with greater fecundity. Swarms of these insects swept across the prairies, at one time reaching from southern Canada to the Mexican border and from California to Iowa. They were the leitmotif of the Great Plains ...
... never seen a life form with greater fecundity. Swarms of these insects swept across the prairies, at one time reaching from southern Canada to the Mexican border and from California to Iowa. They were the leitmotif of the Great Plains ...
Page 3
... perhaps this accounts for the tainted meat. There were several reports of turkeys, never considered the brightest animals, gorging themselves to death amid the morethan-you-can-eat 3 The Third Horseman of the Apocalypse.
... perhaps this accounts for the tainted meat. There were several reports of turkeys, never considered the brightest animals, gorging themselves to death amid the morethan-you-can-eat 3 The Third Horseman of the Apocalypse.
Page 7
... never reach Crockett [fictional] County. Finally, even if the grasshoppers did come, he argued, they could not destroy whole fields. He was wrong. Chalmers became only slightly alarmed when he heard that the insects had crossed into his ...
... never reach Crockett [fictional] County. Finally, even if the grasshoppers did come, he argued, they could not destroy whole fields. He was wrong. Chalmers became only slightly alarmed when he heard that the insects had crossed into his ...
Page 21
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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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