Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1878.djvu/37

Rh geology and ethnology. Thus it will appear that valuable contributions have been made to geography, geology, and ethnology. In botany and zoology no work has been done.

The United States Entomological Commission, attached to the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, has issued its first report on the Rocky Mountain locust, or destructive grasshopper of the West, a volume of some 700 pages, fully illustrated with maps, plates, and wood-cuts.

The favorable predictions made by the commission last winter had an encouraging effect, and stimulated the immigration to the country of late years ravaged by locusts. The statement which a full survey of the field enabled the commission to make in advance, viz, that there would be no serious injury in 1878, has been fully verified. The commissioners have continued their labors during the past summer, confining their attention to that northwestern portion of the country which they have designated as the Permanent Region, the object being to gather further knowledge of that region, with a view of preventing the ravages of the Rocky Mountain locust therein and its migration therefrom.

The problem of destroying the young insects as they hatch out in the more fertile country in the Southeast is virtually solved in the report which the commission has already issued, and the task which they now undertake is to endeavor to prevent the migration of the winged insects from the Permanent Region into the more thickly settled country.

An appropriation of $25,000 was asked of the last Congress for the completion of the work mapped out, and $10,000 were appropriated, and this only toward the end of the fiscal year. The commissioners ask for the additional sum of $15,000, in order that they may be able to continue their investigation until the practical work is accomplished. It was too late in the season when the last appropriation was obtained to permit the completion of the work this year, but with such means as they have husbanded added to the additional appropriation asked for, and with promised assistance by the Dominion authorities, they will be enabled, by getting into the field early the coming spring, to complete fully the work assigned to them.

It is greatly regretted that the act for the continuation of the Hot Springs Commission which passed both Houses at the last session of Congress failed to receive the President's signature because of an omission in engrossing the bill. The portion of the bill incorporated in the engrossed copy is practically inoperative, being strangely mixed with a provision directing the National Academy of Sciences to report to Congress the most practicable plan for surveying and mapping the Territories of the United States, and also the most suitable plan for the publication