Golden Age, October 12, 1932

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The Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

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in this issue

VINDICATION

IN PROSPECT AND REALITY

OUR SEMI-INVISIBLE FRIENDS AND FOES

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEMORIES OF 100 YEARS AGO

WORSHIP

OF A PIECE OF BREAD

YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH

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every other WEDNESDAY

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five cents a copy one dollar a year Canada & Foreign 1.25

Vol. XIV - No. 341

October 12, 1932

CONTENTS

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

Mexico Welcomes Back Her Own 19 21 Out of 27 Families Jobless . 20 Factory Worker Farmers ... 20 Employment Conditions in Chile . 21

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

The Picture Gallery (Cartoons) 16-17

The Associated Press

Sluters

Unemployment and Crime ... 19

Lords Advocate Whipping Children

Bishop Vernon Gets the Air . . 21

The French War Machine . . .21

Hindenburg’s Message to Kaiser . 22

Youth Hostels in England ... 23

An Opening for Pastors . . . .24

Memories of 100 Years Ago . . .25

MANUFACTURING AND MINING

World's Richest Radium Ore . . 24

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

Why Not Print the Money? ... 4

Fourth of World Trade Gone . . 19

Maine's Lobster Problem ... 21

Pullman Service in South Africa . 23

Kreuger's Italian Bonds ... 23

785,000 Telephones Disconnected 24

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

All Weapons Are Defensive . . 22

Supreme Court Four-Ninths Right 30

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY

Our Semi-Invisible Friends and

Foes—the Insects.....5

Rats in Northwestern Canada . . 22

Boston “L” to Grow Mushrooms 23

Cows Beneath the Zuider Zee . . 23

British Farmers Tired of Tithe . 24

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

Scientific Fattening of Chickens . 20

A Crash-Proof Plane.....23

HOME AND HEALTH

A New Way to “Health” ... 19

Sterilization in United States . . 20

Brammel, ja, aber Aluminum nicht 31

How to Scale Fish......31

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

Child Slavery in Hungary ... 20

Complications in Abyssinia ... 23

Evangelist Sued for $126,000 . . 24

London Policemen Unarmed ... 31

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Vindication—in Prospect and

Reality.........3

End of Billy Sundayism • • -20 In Trinity Episcopal Cathedral . 21 Santa Clara Seminary at Cuenca 21 If Christ Came Baek.....22

“Fond Hopes and Cursed Lies” . 23

Bishop DuBose and Angel Gabriel 24

Ireland’s Eucharistic Congress . 26 “Ye Shall Know the Truth” . . 20

Published every other Wednesday at 117 Adams .Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A., by WOODWORTH, KNORR & COWARD

Copartners and Proprietors Address: 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, _V. Y., U. S. A. CLAYTON J. WOODWORTH .. Editor E. ,T. COWARD .. Business Manager NATHAN H. KNORR.. Secretary and Treasurer

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The Golden Age

Volume XIV Brooklyn, N. Y.» Wednesday, October 12, 1932 Number 341

Vindication—in Prospect and Reality (By the Editor)

THE vindication of God's name is already with us, in prospect, and manifestly that means that the vindication in reality is nigh, even at the door. Judge Rutherford’s three books, Vindication One, Vindication Two and Vindication Three, make the mysterious prophecy of Ezekiel as plain as daylight. There is not the least doubt about it. They constitute the. vindication of God’s name in prospect; the vindication in reality will be along shortly.

It is more than 2,500 years since Ezekiel penned the book which bears his name. Neither he nor anyone since his day understood what he wrote prior to the year 1932 (A.D.), and that despite the fact that it is quoted from just fifty times in The Revelation of himself which God gave to His Son, and which He in turn imparted to His church by His angel through His servant John.

Our Lord twice quotes from the prophecy of Ezekiel (Luke 19:10; John 10:16); Paul quotes from it four times (Eph. 5:2; Phil. 4:18; 1 Thess. 4:8; 2 Thess. 2:4); Peter quotes from it once (1 Peter 4:17), and Jude quotes from it once (Jude 12). Several of these references are to the true and false shepherds and the sheep; one refers to judgment beginning at the house of God, and one to the sweet savor to God of a true and faithful devotion to Him of all one’s powers of mind and body.

But the New Testament is, with these exceptions, strangely silent about Ezekiel’s writings until we get to the last book, The Apocalypse, where it suddenly looms up as of first importance. The one could not be understood until the time had come for the other to be fulfilled. The Revelation provided the key to Ezekiel.

Only a year elapsed from the time Judge Rutherford had finished his studies in The Revelation, set forth in Light One and Light Two, and reviewed in these columns in The Golden Age No. 287, issue of September 17, 1930, until his studies of the first twenty-four chapters of Ezekiel’s prophecy were, off the press. Vindication One has been available for a year. Vindication Two and Vindication Three are now available, each on an initial printing of 1,000,000 copies.

What a treat they are! and what a responsibility they bring! The “remnant” that found their work in God’s organization revealed in every chapter in The Revelation find their present and future work revealed in Ezekiel, but another subject looms so large as to completely overshadow that and every other consideration, and that is the Vindication of God’s Name.

The first chapters of The Revelation are a view, largely, of the loosely-built organization that performed here in the earth the work of the 'Elias that was for to come’ before the 'great and terrible day of the Lord’ should be manifest. The first chapters of Ezekiel go farther. They make clear the immensity, the complexity and the irresistible power of God’s Universal Organization, which organization will for ever settle in the minds of all intelligent creatures the issue that has been raised as to Who is God.

The last chapters of The Revelation are a view of the City of God, the Kingdom, but it is such a view as to make one look for more, and long for more, and confidently expect more. Closer views are wanted of the truths locked up in the cryptic statement that “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it”. One feels sure there is bound to be a great amplification.

The concluding chapters of Ezekiel’s prophecy provide just that. As everybody knows, the temple which Ezekiel saw in his vision was never built, and Vindication Three provides complete evidence that it never will be built. There is no occasion for it. The Temple which Ezekiel saw is “The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb”. But see the details in Vindication.

Do you wish to draw nigh to God? Do you desire to be near to Him? Come and see the way

through the gates from the outside into the Outer Court. Or, do you desire to go further? come up, through other gates, to the higher level of the Inner Court. Still better, do you wish a place in the Temple? There are still other gates and a still higher elevation.

Vindication Three makes it all clear where one is, whether in the Outer Court, the Inner Court, or the Temple, and what to do to make progress from one to the other, or to hold fast to the position already attained. Every right-minded person should wish to do with his life the utmost he can to place God’s name in a right light before all creation.

The middle chapters of The Revelation contain many views of the Devil’s organization which cannot be surpassed, but, if they could be surpassed, the more detailed presentations of Ezekiel, clearly explained in Vindication Two, provide such surpassing pictures.

Vindication One is a solemn warning to “Christendom” and to all the world of what is impending in Armageddon. In that final and successful fight for world supremacy and for righteousness, Christ Jesus and His invisible army will put to death all the great men that have defamed the name of the Most High and have made the world an unfit place for decent people to live. They must be removed that peace and justice and truth and love and righteousness may bloom and come to sweet fragrance and maturity.

This work will not be done by men, but it will be heralded by men, and the heralds are now going about the earth warning all, both high and low, rich and poor, great and small, what to expect. God’s kingdom is here; the King is about to slay those that 'would not that He should reign over them’. The “man of sin” that would restrain the heralds must go, too.

Vindication Two goes into detail as to who are the enemies of Jehovah. The hypocritical religionists get plenty of attention, but Big Business is shown up for just what it is, a Satanized system of commercialism which has oppressed the people of all lands and reproached the name of Jehovah God and is no more worthy to survive than are the governments that have done its will and are doing it today to the great injury and sorrow of their fellows. In this book we have the identity of Gog revealed. We are permitted, by Jehovah God, to lift the curtain and see something of what is going on in the invisible realm of the Devil himself.

Vindication Three contains a happy surprise. It was foreseen that it would examine the Temple. But it also contains a complete and most satisfactory exposition of the anointing and subsequent work of Jehu. Once more the remnant are refreshed and encouraged as they see the part they have played and are playing in the vindication of Jehovah’s name.

Words fail to express the gratitude that fills the heart as one slowly turns these pages and finds them filled with easily understood and manifestly correct explanations of scriptures which the wisest and best of mankind have for centuries been compelled to lay aside as not yet due to be understood. Happy is our portion. Blessed are our eyes that we see the things of which the prophets wrote, which we know they did not understand, but which we know we do understand, because all about us are the fulfilments. The Temple is still open. Will you come in?

These three wonderful books, with any other one of Judge Rutherford’s wonderful books, The Harp of God, Deliverance, Creation, Reconciliation, Government, Life or Prophecy, sent to any address on receipt of $1. Orders may be sent to this office. All twelve of his books, including Light One and Light Two, only $3, postpaid.

Why Not Print the Money?

THE New York American wants to know why the Government, in order to pay the bonus to the soldiers, should not print the money and give it to them direct. It wants to know why it is necessary for the Government first to sell the bonds to bankers, and then pay interest on the bonds, before the money can be issued. The answer is that the Government is trying to stave off as long as possible the complete collapse of the present iniquitous financial system. Everybody knows that the time will come when it must go, but the bankers that control the financial policies of the Government wish to postpone that evil day and retain their present advantages just as long as it is possible for them to do so.

Our Semi-Invisible Friends and Foes — the Insects

Part 2

The Locust Pest

WE HAVE no intention here to say anything about the antitypical locusts that are now making it so interesting for those that have not the seal of God in their forehead, but about the real, literal locusts that for centuries have been such terrible foes of humanity. The Scriptures have much to say about them. We quote a few passages:

If thou refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast: and they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to sec the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which rcmaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field: and they shall fill thy houses, and the houses of all thy servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians; which neither thy fathers, nor thy fathers’ fathers have seen, since the day that they were upon the earth unto this day.—Ex. 10:4-6.

And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such. For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.—Ex. 10:14,15.

The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.—Prov. 30: 27.

Hear this, ye elders, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land, hath this ever happened in your days? or in the days of your fathers? Concerning it to your children tell ye the story, and your children to their children, and their children to the generation following: That which was left by the creeping locust hath the swarming locust eaten, and that which was left by the swarming locust hath the grass locust eaten; and that which was left by the grass locust hath the corn locust eaten.—Joel 1: 2, 3, Roth.

He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.—Joel 1: 7.

The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.—Joel 2: 3.

In Palestine in 1915

A writer in the National Geographic Magazine gives some details of the locust plague which swept over Palestine in 1915. It gives us some idea of what a terrible scourge a plague of locusts may Ire:

Attention was drawn to them by the sudden darkening of the bright sunshine, and then by a veritable shower of their excretions, which fell thick and fast and resembled those of mice, especially noticeable on the white macadam roads. At times their elevation was in hundreds of feet; at other times they came down quite low, detached members alighting. The clouds of them would be so dense as to appear quite black, with the edges vignetted till they thinned down and faded away into the clear blue sky around.

At once these numberless hosts began to prepare for the destruction that was to follow. Each female, now loaded with eggs, seeks a place suitable to deposit them, and with her ovipositors is able to sink a hole as much as four inches deep, through hard compact soil, such as would try the strength of human muscles even with iron tools. How so small and frail a creature can bore in such hard ground and to such a depth seems a marvel which only nature can accomplish or explain.

While boring the hole the female sits, wings outstretched, upon the earth, and possibly moistens the soil to facilitate the work. She evidently has the ability to stretch or lengthen her annulea, pressing her body into the hole till the depth required is attained. The eggs, averaging about a hundred in number, are now deposited in the bottom of this hole, not haphazard, but neatly arranged in a long cylindrical mass and enveloped in a sticky glutinous secretion, with which frothy substance the top of the hole is also sealed to prevent enemies encroaching, and at the same time of such a nature as to allow the newly hatched brood to get out readily. It was found, in digging for these eggs, that when newly laid they could with ease be removed from the soil in one piece over an inch long and as thick as a slate pencil; but once a few days had passed, they crumbled apart when touched.

It is estimated by competent authorities that as many as 65,000 to 75,000 locust eggs are concentrated in a square meter of soil, and allowing for a loss of 30 per cent in hatching, some 60,000 destroyers can emerge from a space 39 inches square.

It was observed that these new broods instinctively went in the reverse direction to that from which their flying parents had come, making practically for the northeast. None but those who have seen them can begin to imagine their countless multitudes and the destruction to follow.

The locusts, when advanced into the second or pupa stage, walk like ordinary insects, leaping only when frightened into a quicker pace, which they readily accomplish by the use of their two long and powerful posterior legs. However, while still in the first or larva stage, they seemed to hop much like fleas, so that when anything neared their thickened masses it seemed as if the entire surface of the ground moved, producing a most curious effect upon one’s vision and causing dizziness, which in some was so severe as to produce a sensation not unlike seasickness. The same was also true when watching them undisturbed on tree or field.

As the locust labors to release itself from the old shell, we see the new eyes emerging, leaving behind their old transparent films resembling miniature automobile goggles. With much shoving and pushing, the head alone emerges, the long wings slowly unfold from the sacks containing them, and the entire body, legs and all, drops out of its old shell. Instead of depending upon a framework of bones within its body to give it the required strength and stiffness, the locust relies upon its tough outer skin, and therefore, now that it has lost its old shell, it cannot be otherwise than limp and soft, so that it has to remain still until the hot sun and dry air have hardened and stiffened it anew.

While on the usual march, vegetable food being still abundant, it would often be seen that a larger locust would, without provocation or warning, walk up to a smaller one and with one bite nip off one of the long back legs. The victim seemed not to care, unless it happened to be a signal, as usually -was the case, for dozens more to pounce on it, consuming the entire insect in a few moments. Sometimes a mightier one happened by and carried off the entire prey to devour by itself. Similarly, scarcely had a locust been hurt or crushed before its fellow’s would be found fighting over it like dogs with a bone. At times injured locusts would be found eating away at their own bruised bodies, and not uncommon was it to find a locust minus its annuli and entrails, running about seemingly unmindful of its deficiencies.

Still more remarkable was a story told by a doctor friend who personally treated the case in question. It ran thus: A peasant woman on the plain of Sharon, during the locust pest, employed herself in trying to drive the creeping locusts out of her orchard. She took a tiny baby with her, and laying it in the shade of a tree, proceeded to her work. Returning shortly after, she found the child literally covered with the insects and its eyes already consumed out of the sockets. The writer’s little boy also was bitten on the throat by one sufficiently to draw blood.

Whenever touched, or especially when finding themselves caught within one’s clothes, they exuded from their mouth a dark fluid, an irritant to the skin and soiling the garments in a most disgusting manner. Imagine the feeling (we speak from experience) with a dozen or two such creatures over an inch long, with sawlike legs and rough bodies making a race-course of your back!

An old established method of stopping the progress of locusts while they are still in the walking stage is to drive them into sunken traps. To overcome the difficulty of the labor and time required in shifting these sunken traps, a Yankee in our party devised an improvement. An old box, tin-lined, was set on top of the ground, with an inclined plane leading up to it. The locusts, which can make ascents so much easier than descents, were driven into it just as easily as into the sunken trap. It was so quickly and easily placed that it proved to be a great success, the only drawback, as with the older type, being the labor of emptying it and the numbers that escaped. The next development was a tin hopper set on legs high enough to admit of fastening a sack below. To this the inclined plane was similarly attached. Thus the locusts jumped directly into the bag, which, when full, was readily detached and replaced with another, while the full sacks, not a locust of which escaped, were so handy to carry away for destruction.

More Recent Visitations

In 1921 there was a plague of locusts in France; some 7,500 acres were ravaged. In 1925 South Africa had the worst scourge it had known in 20 years. The variety, voetgangers, foot-walkers (immature, wingless locusts), were a little more easily disposed of than when in the flying stage. Deep trenches, and plenty of poison and liquid fire were required to keep them down.

In 1928 they were in Greece, where the government was combating them with the big predatory locusts from China, the mantis, and expecting to spend $3,200,000 in a campaign against them. The same year they were in the Philippines, where the Filipinos are quite successful in scaring them into the sea by the terrible noises they make with a device called the bamboo maquina. The siren-like shriek emitted when this bamboo Horse-fiddle’ is played is enough to make the locusts and everybody else want to rush off and drown themselves.

The same year, 1928, they were in southern Xew South Wales, Australia, on a front twenty miles wide. They were also in incredible hosts in Palestine. Concerning the fight to subdue them in the latter country we quote two paragraphs from a correspondent who was on the spot:

For all the tons of weight we took, and all the bushel baskets of eggs, those enemy forces continued to advance as though they had suffered no losses at all! Never have I imagined such a spectacle as we witnessed on the classic Plain of Esdraelon between Megiddo and Nazareth. My horse was often fetlock deep in red insects which had changed their color like chameleons from a dull yellow-green when preparing to swarm in search of food. At times, indeed, my Arab mare was past her knees in the living, feeding masses that struggled upon grape vines and ripening grain and fruit.

Was anything ever more wonderful than the moonlit advance of scientific troops against this recurrent Plague of Egypt? The hot Eastern night was soon rayed and pierced with broad tongues of dazzling flame, mile long it seemed, that wilted and withered the locusts in countless myriads. We were now concentrating assault on some ten square miles of invaded farm lands between Semakh and Daganiah. Here burned and scorched locusts lay in incredible heaps. Our flame guns, strategically placed to anticipate new out-flanking motions of the invader, shot long bars of killing light in all directions, like the searchlights of a naval squadron searching out unseen attackers in a dark and stormy sea. Add to all this the howls and yells in Arabic, Hebrew and broken English, and you will visualize the weirdest war scene ever staged in the Holy Land since Joshua advanced upon walled Jericho . . . Toward dawn intelligence officers telephoned to the fighting front that the endless hosts were no longer continuing to settle on the crops and trees. The enemy were routed at last.

In the same year they were in Russia and also devastated many fields in the Tientsin-Peiping section of China.

In 1929 the province of Sind, India, was overrun, and in southern Bulgaria the government mobilized every man and woman between the ages of 16 and 80 in a successful attempt to combat the pest. In this contest more than 65 tons of locusts were destroyed by smoke, lye and oil before the victory was gained.

The Scourge in Northern Africa

Early in 1929 the French opened a campaign which cost some $480,000, and involved the services of 60,000 Algerians, specially trained for the work, in an attempt to keep down the pest which was expected to be more than ordinarily active in northern Africa that year.

Beaters drove the insects against great sheets or into enclosures of corrugated iron, where they were exterminated by a spray of sodium arsenate, or by flame throwers such as were used on each other by ‘Christians’ during the World War. The ground was then sprayed with poisoned molasses.

Everything was scientifically calculated. The tables showed there would be 120 locusts to the ounce, and all about it. But, as if to show puny man that he is nowhere when it comes to a real fight, the next year northern Africa, all the way from Morocco to Arabia and the Persian Gulf, had one of the worst scourges in history.

In the fight that followed the locusts were so thick at one place in Morocco that they halted a train. One swarm in Egypt was fifty miles in length. Flame throwers were brought into use. At Amman, Palestine, one-third of the population was drafted to fight the plague. Much damage was done far down into the heart of Africa. The expense bill of the previous year was multiplied by ten.

In Transjordania at one time the British had 25,000 men battling the hordes of locusts. A dispatch said rather sadly, if not comically: “Last year powder was spread by airplanes, but the locusts appeared to like it. Greater hopes are held out concerning the new liquid.”

Visitations in America

The first great locust visitation in the United States was in 1874, when all the territory between the Missouri river and the Rocky mountains was overrun. They came in swarms that darkened the sun, they carpeted the fields, and in instances actually ate the shingles off the houses. The crop damage that year was estimated at $50,000,000.

In the year 1931 thousands of square miles of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa, were ravaged. The official estimate was that about 46,875 square miles were wiped clean. In one South Dakota field of 1,600 acres it was declared that after the locusts had finished there was not enough vegetation left behind to feed a single animal. Poisoned food by the carload was distributed in the path of the oncoming hosts, which marched at the rate of fifty miles a day.

In April of this year South Africa was visited by a cloud of locusts said to have been 500 miles wide and 1,500 miles long. An attempt was made to attack them with motor trucks, but the trucks were soon outdistanced and all the farmers could do was to wait for them to breed and then attack the swarms separately. Millions settled on the sea and in one place were washed ashore, covering the beach to a depth of several feet.

In Tunis, at the same time, 100,000 natives had dug a trench 40 miles long, and were engaged in a life or death struggle to save their food supplies. A month later the troops were called out to fight them in Argentina and the Philippines, and in June they were in Italy and Mexico.

A Most Perplexing Problem

From an article in the Norfolk Landmark we quote a number of interesting paragraphs on this subject:

Three nations—France, England and Italy—have united in a war on the locust. All three have large colonial possessions in Africa, chief home of the insect, and, according to the terms of the new agreement, data about locusts and methods of controlling them will be made available to all at a central clearing house for information, in London.

“When a locust ‘cloud’ looms on the horizon in Africa, hundreds of Arab and Spanish laborers, overseers, and even wealthy French landowners themselves, and semi-naked Arab children go into the fields and walk abreast in an almost straight line, beating old wooden pails, empty boxes, a vegetable can, or a drum, or blowing a tin trumpet or twirling a policeman’s rattle. Each person walks in a furrow to himself, attempting, by deafening noises, to keep the locusts from settling. Frequently owners of plantations build fires and make them smoke to keep swarms of locusts in motion.

“If, however, the locusts do succeed in alighting, nothing can drive them off. Equally they take wing again the following morning — after stripping everything green from the landscape — unless the time has arrived for the female locust to lay her eggs. The female digs holes in the earth two or three inches deep, in which she deposits from 60 to 70 eggs, enveloped in a glutinous secretion, shaped somewhat like an ear’ of wheat.

“Men have to plow and spade every inch of the ground when eggs are laid, for the nymphs, hatched from the eggs, are more destructive than the locusts, and the only way to prevent the eggs from hatching is to uncover them and leave them in the open sunlight.

“This period of incubation is 21 days; then tiny creatures, called nymphs, crawl out. They remain quiet for two days and then begin to eat. They eat and eat and eat.

‘ ‘ Alen with torches burn the nymphs by the millions, but they crawl out of the earth faster than the hand of man can destroy them. The first one to come out takes the lead, and the others follow in swarms many feet wide. They make a curious noise, like the sound of the sea.

“It seems incredible that a thing so small and insignificant is so difficult to destroy. Build great fires and the swarms of crawling, wriggling nymphs will smother them, those in front being burned by millions, and those in the rear pushing on and passing over the burned bodies of the leaders. They will block and fill up a sluggish African stream, and the millions in the rear will pass over unharmed.

‘ ‘ The Government sends troops to aid in the defense, for it means ruin and starvation to thousands of people, besides heavy money losses. Great trenches are dug and the nymphs fall in, and when three-fourths full kerosene oil is poured on them and they are set afire or else earth is thrown on them to a depth of about two feet. They can crawl out of the earth if covered only with a few inches, but when deeply covered they smother to death.

“The young locusts are most destructive, selecting the choicest vegetables or tender shoots and green leaves. It takes weeks for them to develop from a tiny, black nymph into a full-sized locust, but they increase rapidly in size, and one can almost see their legs and wings develop.

‘ ‘ Arabs eat the flesh of locusts when killed by themselves, but refrain if their death has been caused by cold or the hand of an infidel, as they are then considered impure. Locusts are eaten after the legs, wings and heads have been picked off.

‘ ‘ They are either grilled or broiled and prepared with native wheat. If dried in the sun they are ground to powder and mixed with goats’ or camels’ milk and cooked in fat or butter and salt. Almost every animal devours locusts; even camels appear to like them as food. ’ ’

The female American locust (or grasshopper, as we usually call it in America) lays 600 to 800 eggs at one time, so that in one year’s time one grasshopper may have from 150,000 to 400,000 descendants.

This year, the descendants of the grasshoppers that were in the United States last year have been spreading ruin in parts of Manitoba, and there are also plenty of them in Idaho and Iowa. In Manitoba they were so thick as to interfere with the movement of passenger trains.

In a section of South Dakota adjacent to Chamberlain a strange disease broke out among the surviving grasshoppers (locusts) in July, 1932. On the farm of George Spreckles they died off by the millions; and when the scientists have found what killed them there is a chance that a new and vastly better method may be found for dealing with one of the very worst of the insect pests.

Grasshoppers on Ice

In the municipal cold storage plant at Seattle a supply of giant grasshoppers from the interior of China is kept on hand, held dormant until spring, ■when they are shipped and distributed in infected areas. These huge grasshoppers, which are normally about four inches long, make short work of the little American grasshoppers, as well as caterpillars, crickets and moths with which the farmers of the Northwest have to contend. But we can’t help but think it would be just too bad if those giant mantis, as they are called, should get out of control and do some of the things on this side of the water that they do in Asia.

There are other grasshoppers on ice in the Northwest, and they are there for good. Many centuries ago, before the glaciers were formed in the Glacier National Park region, huge swarms of grasshoppers were buried in the snows which later solidified into the glaciers. The insects, perfectly preserved, have been found in great numbers in what is otherwise crystal-clear ice. There is a Grasshopper Glacier, so called, some miles out of Cooke, Montana.

It will be a surprise to some to learn that, despite all our local supplies, we have to import into this country every year several tons of grasshoppers from South Africa. These are food for rare African birds in our zoological gardens. They contain valuable elements for which there has not been found a substitute.

27-Fear Locust Not a Locust

America has three varieties of cicadas which are commonly called locusts, but which are really not locusts at all. The 17-year locust’ spends about 16 years and 11 months of its life under ground, where the pupa undergoes five transformations. It emerges to feed and mate and lay eggs and die. As there are at least 17 broods, and they have different years for emerging from the ground, it follows that there are locusts’ of this type every year.

And then, besides the 17-year locusts’, there are 13-year ones and 2-year ones. These cicadas all burrow a foot or two below the surface, where they attach themselves to a root for nourishment. Those of a given brood all come to the surface, in June, at almost exactly the same time. Ants make a business of helping themselves to the wells which the cicadas dig, and even drive the latter away from their own wells. During their brief mating season the cicadas sing in a monotonous buzz from early morning until sundown.

In view of what is contained in this short article on locusts, or grasshoppers, we feel we can fully endorse the editorial in the Better Health magazine which says:

To fight the fruit fly, to fight the boll weevil and the corn borer, to fight the flea that transmits bubonic plague and can see to bite even when the lights are out, to fight malarial mosquitoes, to fight the familiar fly and the countless invisible enemies of man, will give all of us all the fighting we want without fighting one another. Science can be directed to better ends in forging weapons to fight these pests than in maiming fellow men.

The chief of the Bureau of Entomology in the United States recently made the statement: “It has become strikingly obvious that insects are collectively the most important enemies of humanity on the earth. It has also become perfectly plain that if human creatures are to maintain their hold on this globe, if they are to continue to exist, they must learn to control insects. ’ ’

The Japanese Beetle

It was a bad day for New Jersey and for the United States when, in 1916, the Japanese beetle gained a foothold in the United States through a small shipment of bulbs from Japan to Riverton, N. J. This beetle, which eats anything and everything eatable, including even the very roots of the grasses, has spread all over New Jersey and adjacent parts of nearby states, involving a huge expense for attempts at quarantine and extermination.

Japanese pheasants feed on these beetles. They have been imported by the thousand and are now being raised and liberated so that they may help to keep the pest down. At least five parasites of the beetle have been imported. Effort is made to limit the importation to such parasites as know no other food and as are unlikely to develop bad habits of their own.

It has been discovered that the Japanese beetle is fond of geraniums; so beetle traps are baited with a sweet-smelling extract of geraniums blended -with malt. Once Mr. Beetle smells the geranium odor he hastens down the funnel into the trap, gets intoxicated on the malt, and is later destroyed -with boiling water. In 1930 the number of these malt traps was 25,583.

How it would be possible to obtain malt in a state which has such ‘godly* cities as Asbury Park, Ocean Grove, Bergenfield, Westfield and Summit, and which shone so brilliantly in the Lindbergh affair and the third-degree murder which accompanied it, we will not undertake to explain.

150,000 Kinds of Beetles

The word “beetle” comes from a word which means “to bite”; so a beetle is a biter. There are 12,000 kinds of these biters in North America and Central America, and some 150,000 of them of all kinds in all parts of the world. The 500 varieties of so-called “glowworms” are improperly called worms. They are really beetles. The methods by which these produce their lights, and the reasons why they produce the lights, are unimown.

Britain has a kind of beetle, called the “deathbeetle”, which has a ravenous appetite for old wood. At any time, in an old castle or church building in England, the death-beetles, which seem to work almost entirely in the interior of the beam, may scoop out the entire interior of a large piece of timber, leaving nothing but a hollow shell.

There is a beetle with a somewhat similar appetite in Brazil. It gnaws its way around a tree, quite close to the ground. Then it goes around again, gnawing a deeper and deeper furrow, and so on until the tree collapses. The land contains whole forests in which every tree has thus been leveled to the ground. For many years search has been made for some means of combating the ravages of this beetle, and at last a bug has been discovered which preys upon it; millions of these are being taken to Brazil.

Digging In with a Vengeance

The Asiatic beetle (a different one from the Japanese beetle) is making trouble on Long Island. To fight it, a tiny 'digger’ wasp has been imported from Korea by the hundreds. This wasp lays one egg a day, and every day. When an Asiatic beetle is in the neighborhood, she manages to glue her egg to the under side of the beetle, in a place where he cannot reach it, either with his mouth or with his feet. The wasp comes to life finding its nose resting against its favorite food supply, and the result is a thrifty wasp and a dead beetle.

The elm-leaf beetle defoliated about a half million trees in Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts last year. This little creature lays 600 eggs in a season, and each egg that comes to maturity eats an oval hole about a quarter inch in diameter and then starts an egg-laying contest of its own. The early settlers in an elm tree live to see the tree pretty well ruined.

Australia has a grayback beetle which in 1929 caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage to sugar plantations. Two men in Brisbane, who chanced to know where they were thickest, are said to have made $1,000 in 10 days by catching them and turning them in for the bounty.

Not all beetles have a bad disposition. One friendly fellow, on one occasion, was seen to take a worm by the head, turn it around and conduct it tenderly to a hole in the ground, so that it might not be picked up by a keen-eyed blackbird in the vicinity.

The Devil’s coach horse lives on decaying animal or vegetable matter and is said to be of some importance to agriculture by reducing dead animal and vegetable matter to a condition in which it is assimilable by plants.

The European Corn Borer

Like the World War, the European corn borer is something that came to us from the quarrelsome part of the earth, Europe, and is of about as much benefit. It would be bad enough if it just attacked corn, our principal crop, and ruined that, and stopped there. But it has an omnivorous appetite and has been found attacking more than 200 kinds of plants, including several common weeds, the small grains, the millets, buckwheat, broom corn, hemp, peanuts, soy beans, white clover, and hops.

In the South the corn-ear worm, which we suppose to be the same as the corn borer (but which may not be) is found to be cannibalistic, and this is taken advantage of to keep them down. They are encouraged to lay their eggs on corn planted late; there the larvae eat one another and keep away from the cotton until the bolls have developed so hard that the borers or worms cannot penetrate.

In Michigan a corn has been bred which is a cross between a native variety and a South American type, which has shown itself 100-per-cent resistant to the corn borer when planted in alternate rows with other corn which has been infested with this parasite. As a result of this discovery many sections which had been ruined by the borer are now again raising corn.

Twenty different parasites on the corn borer have been imported and a dozen of these are doing good work. Other aids are cutting the corn at the surface, plowing under cleanly and burning completely everything left on top of the ground.

There are two different strains of the corn borer present in the United States. One of these, called the ‘two-generation’ strain, develops two broods of moths a year, one in the spring and the other late in the summer. It has an appetite for corn and broom corn, also cut flowers, the entire plants of chrysanthemum, aster, gladiolus, dahlia, lima and shell beans in pod, rhubarb, and beets with tops.

The boll weevil, which does so much damage to cotton, is a rather rare insect of Central America, or was until we made a nice home for it in our southern cotton fields. At present it eats up some $100,000,000 to $150,000,000 worth of cotton per year, and yet, with all that assistance to his marketing operations, the poor cotton farmer produces such an overplus that he is now getting only about 5c a pound, one-fourth the regular price.

The Musical Insect — the Cricket

"Gryllus” is the technical name for the cricket. Early in December the grillos, as they are called, almost swamp the tropical cities on the west coast of South America. They come with the first rains. For a few days they are everywhere, darkening the street lights and hiding the color of paint on the walls. They spring all over pedestrians and are crushed beneath their feet at every step. They enter homes and stores and dine upon woolen and silk goods early and often. The first heavy rains drown them by the millions, and the dogs and cats and sea gulls take those that remain.

The Japanese have reared crickets from time immemorial and have greatly developed their musical possibilities. If a cricket is fed amply on lettuce leaves, with those of the tomato, carrot and cucumber, it will sing all day. If fed salt it ceases thenceforth to sing.

A cricket has tremendous vitality. It can live in an almost total vacuum or in compressed air, and can be quickly switched from one to the other, which is something no human could endure. It can be. centrifugally whirled at 1,200 revolutions a minute for ten minutes and seems not to notice it at all.

By timing the frequency of a cricket’s chirps one can tell the temperature without a thermometer. The prevailing temperature in degrees Fahrenheit equals the number of chirps made in a quarter of a minute, plus thirty-seven. The snowy white or tree crickets are the ones used as thermometers.

Crickets are sold in Japan at 10c each; fireflies are 1c each, but toward the close of the season drop to 75c per 100. The chief insect store of Tokio maintains three breeding stations. A really fine insect cage sells for $100, occupants and all.

Five Thousand Kinds of Ants

One kind of ants would be plenty enough if they were all Mexican Tepeguas or foraging ants. These ants, which are blind, when they attack a house, kill every rat, mouse, lizard, spider, centipede, louse or cockroach it contains. They will even attack a man.

Another kind of ant we could get along without is the so-called ‘flying white anf or termite, of which we have 39 varieties in the United States. In most instances these ants, which destroy the timbers in a home, or which eat the insides out of books without the damage being apparent from the outside, can be killed by merely seeing that in the construction of the home, or in its reconstruction, no untreated wood comes in contact with the earth. The termite nest is underground; his food is wood; if the two are separated and the engineers of the colony cannot bridge the gap, he dies, dries up.

The termite ant has been known to build structures rising twenty feet in air. The cubic space in an ant hill will contain a million times as many inhabitants as the largest human habitation. Termites eat their own dead and the skins they have shed. There is no dirt or filth in the colony. Invalids and loafers are dispatched and eaten. On one occasion termites in the Philippines ate nearly $2,500,000 worth of paper money.

Useful Ants in Central Java

In Java black ants are bought and sold by the millions to protect the cocoa trees. When these ants are present in a tree the beetle, which is the cocoa tree’s worst enemy, becomes disturbed and ceases his destructive work. The ants do not injure the trees.

Peru has a ‘surgical’ ant, so called. When a native is wounded he gets a certain type of ant with powerful jaws. The ant is made to bite the severed edges of the skin and bring them together. After he bites his body is snipped off and his head with its death grip on the skin remains till the wound is healed.

Prospectors for precious metals find ants a valuable ally. By examining the piles of soil brought to the surface by the ants, which often reach considerable depths, they can get a good idea of the general character of the material to be found immediately below.

Ants do some astonishing things. There is a yellow ant in Florida which, twenty-four hours before a heavy rain, carries its young grubs up from the underground tunnels into the upper stories of the mound. It is well known that some varieties of ants keep herds of ‘cows’ to supply them with milk, and employ cowboys to watch the herds. These ‘cows’ are aphids which secrete a sweetish liquid which the ants enjoy. In cold weather the aphids are housed in barns at night, but during the day and throughout the summer are out of doors, constantly guarded to prevent their escape.

Some ants prepare food in the summer. Seeds are gathered. When they become fully dry they are pulverized, the flour is chewed into dough, and the dough is left in the sunshine to bake^ Some ants in cold weather move their babies over to the warm side of the ant hill, the side next to the sun.

An ant may go insane. One that ran around in circles and attacked members of its own colony was killed. Microscopic dissection revealed a tumor on the left side of the insect’s brain, causing its right feet to drag when it walked.

A careful study of a huge nest of ants in the Alps disclosed the fact that it was about twenty-five feet in diameter, contained at least 400,000 ants, and that it disposed of about 40,000 insects daily. An exact count made over a long period of time and in various kinds of weather showed that 42 percent of the captured insects were forest pests.

Some Astonishing Things Ants Do

In Africa a group of ants overtook a caterpillar armed with bristles which exude a liquid highly disagreeable to them. One by one they bit off the bristles, sealing them with dry earth, and wound up by killing the caterpillar and carrying him off.

There are ants that sew leaves together; and of what do you suppose the thread is composed? Their own babies. When the babies get bigger they find their food right at hand.

Among the so-called ‘agricultural’ ants are some that have areas a dozen feet across where they grow their ant rice. There are two classes of workers, major and minor. The majors have big heads and capable jaws with which they crack the hard grain for general consumption.

If a burning match is dropped too near an ant hill, and the thing is done repeatedly, the ants of a certain kind called ‘fire-fighters’ will organize into a fire brigade and put it out with ejections of formic acid. The soldier ants of Brazil, which march twelve abreast, five files to the foot, with officers alongside at a distance of four or five inches, will tackle anything in their path, even including a fire. They come in such numbers and with such precision that absolutely nothing can stand against them. The largest animal, if it remains in the path, will within twenty-four hours be reduced to a pile of clean white bones.

Some Things Hard to Believe

Ants are hospitable. Tiny crickets are often maintained as pets in ant homes, and beetles with a peculiar fragrance are also made welcome. Certain species of ants possess a stridu-lating instrument consisting of a finely ridged lute upon the abdomen, and a plectrum so situated that by rasping the surface it can produce an extremely delicate and high-pitched musical note. Dr. Robert Staeger inKosmos (Stuttgart), writes of this beautiful faint little sort of humming chirp. He says:

I remember with delight the first time I was present at such a musical ‘ festival ’. This was a few years ago on the Bel Alp in the Wallis. The entire quiet which prevailed at this lofty station helped me to perceive the sound. The ‘concert’ was given by grass-ants which dwell there in very populous colonies. When I lifted a stone from a nest and held my ear down above the milling throng of the fleeing residents, I perceived a perceptible chirping sound, the product of many thousand voices, in which delicate crescendi and diminuen-di were plainly perceptible. In order to prolong my enjoyment of this music I shook a whole nest into a linen bag, which I hung temporarily on the wall of my hotel room. When I wanted a concert I needed only to shake the sack to hear the loveliest serenade in the middle of the night.

The ants make mistakes, too. In the Dutch East Indies there is an insect which secretes a fluid that tastes very good to certain black ants. The ants drink the fluid, which paralyzes them, and then the insect that has entrapped them murders them and drinks their blood at his leisure. How like the politicians!

In Tunis there is a species of ant that goes to another kind of ant colony, gets herself adopted as queen, and straightway her children own the whole works and all the rest become slaves. In the end, by preventing their natural increase, she kills off all the workers and dies herself of starvation. How like Big Business!

In the huge ant heaps of South Africa the queen of the hive is imprisoned for life in a hard-formed pocket of clay. She is copiously fed, but cannot move herself. Her business is to lay eggs, and that, besides eating, is all she does. How like the clergy!

How to Get Rid of Ants

Ants are poisoned by using equal parts of tartar emetic and sugar, with a dash of honey. Moisten, and pour into shallow dishes set in the runways of the ants. They will eat very freely of this and, as it does not take effect quickly, they carry the poison into the nest and thus help to dispose of the whole brood.

A second method, when a colony has been located, is to pour an ounce or two of carbon disulphide into each of several holes made in the nest with a sharp stick, and then quickly stop up each hole with a clod of earth. A heavy wet blanket thrown over the nest also helps to keep the fumes in the galleries until they have done their work. Carbon disulphide is highly inflammable and must be handled with care.

A third method is to dust the ants with sodium fluoride. A fourth method is to dissolve one pound of sugar in one quart of water, add 125 grains of arsenate of soda, boil, strain, add a small amount of honey, and soak a sponge with the mixture and put it where the ants can get it.

Three Million Species

Science has identified about 650,000 species of insects, and it is estimated that there are probably five times that number in existence. New York state alone has identified 19,000 species, of which 8,000 have been found in the metropolitan area. While we accept the more conservative estimate of some three million species of insects, others have estimated that there are five to ten million species. Anyway, we cannot hope to describe many of them in this article. Entomologists add about 6,000 to their lists annually.

Every living tiring is wonderful. Here are some of the wonders of some of the insects. Upon the lens of the eye of a dragon fly 17,000 facets have been counted, each one more perfect than any side of a diamond fashioned by the hand of man. It is so keen of vision and swift of flight as to recognize, follow and catch on the wing the tiniest prey. It can fly forward, backward, to right or left at top speed. Most insects are nearsighted, and it is a good thing for the rest of us that they are.

Crickets hear with their elbows; other insects have the hearing apparatus located in the legs. The lungs (spiracles) of insects are all over the body, and that is why oily substances smother them. Wherever the oil touches the body a thin film spreads over it, covering the air-openings, so that the insect soon dies by asphyxiation.

Talk about a sense of smell! In a single antenna of the hornet are about 13,000 to 14,000 microscopic pits filled with fluid. Each pit is an olfactory organ, supplied with a fine nerve. In an antenna of the male European cockchafer there are 39,000 of these pits; in the female, 35,000. That is the first time we ever knew the men had better noses on them than the women; but the difference is not enough for us to brag about, or we would.

Stick insects, from the East Indies, are so much like tiny twigs or sticks that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from their surroundings. They imitate the twigs exactly, folding their slender legs close to their bodies and hanging from the smaller branches just like leafless stalks.

Leaf insects are of a bright green tint and are shaped exactly like leaves, the wings being folded over one another and marked with veins. The legs are shaped like smaller leaves. They are quite safe from the birds, which think that they are merely leaves.

"When it comes to a sense of location the insects have us all beat. A wasp or bee, before leaving home the first time, examines the surroundings carefully, and thereafter never has any trouble in returning; but a young bee that has not made the study is quite lost. This shows that insects have powers of observation and memory.

Some of the Useful Insects

Without the little lac hugs of India and Siam we would be without shellac, which is an exudation from their bodies. They feed on certain trees by the millions, exuding the material subsequently to form their tomb. The incrustations are broken away with wooden mallets.

The greatest gift of the insect to agriculture is pollination. It is claimed that bananas and oranges are the only fruits under present cultivation that do not rely on insect pollination. Without insects there would be no vegetables, no cotton or linen cloth, no silk, no clover or alfalfa, and no wool.

The choicest of all figs, the Smyrna fig, depends upon the fig wasp, or Blastophaga, if you prefer the scientific name. Until the wasp was imported it was impossible to grow this fig in America.

The scale insects supply certain fine waxes, cochineal and its accompanying purple dye and some other materials.

In Australia recently three hundred million bugs were released in the hope that they would keep down the growth of the prickly pear. Introduced into Australia a hundred years ago, this plant now covers 63,000,000 acres and is spreading at the rate of 500,000 acres annually. The cochineal insect, from which the red dye of that name is made, is a natural foe of the prickly pear and other cactus growths, and there are other insect foes.

The earwig, once regarded the enemy of gardeners, is now considered one of his best friends. It is a scavenger, a dispatcher of plant lice and of other insects, and useful in getting the soil in friable condition. The earwig, giant of all insects, will pull a wagon loaded with 530 times its own weight, and will drag a dead weight of pins 27 times its own weight. Growing earwigs have a habit of eating their younger brothers and sisters. The young earwig changes its skin four times before maturity.

And Some That Are Otherwise

It was doubtless from a full heart that a subscriber from Oklahoma recently wrote us:

I want to tell you something about the insects and pests we of Oklahoma have had to contend with this year. Just now we are troubled with the oat bug, which is a minute black bug that comes in droves of thousands, flying through the air, alighting on everyone, indoors and out. They are so very troublesome and annoying this hot sultry weather. You can hardly keep them off your face. Our relief comes when the wind rises and blows them away. They come about the time the oats begin to ripen, and, as a rule, last only a few days; but this year they are more numerous and have lasted much longer than usual. There are many different kinds of ants. The flying ant is a very common kind; it often gets into the houses. There is a very small ant about the size of the oat bug that seems to come through the very walls, and is so annoying, as it always gets into kitchens and pantries. There are different remedies for its control, some of which are fairly efficient. The big red ant is on the increase, using up quite a lot of land with its hills all through the yards and fields. Its sting is very painful, and is poisonous to some people. There are lots of chinch bugs now, but we do not have them every year. Mosquitoes, we always have them with us. Even the moles are burrowing all through the ground, spoiling the lawns and gardens. There are several kinds of flies to annoy man and beast through the day. They have been known to kill cattle and horses. And last, and least in size only, is the pestiferous chigger, which is so persistently attentive to us all. But there have never been any so zealous as those that live in our dewberry patch. Oklahoma is one of the beauty spots of the earth. The nights are wonderful. We love to sleep out of doors, but it is almost impossible to do so on account of the insects. The prairie dogs are destroying the pasture land and have to be killed off periodically.

There you have it; living in a paradise, but with at least ten different kinds of pests that make it impossible to live in comfort. What is true of Oklahoma is more or less true of every beauty spot on earth. In the peach districts of the South the peach worm, the peach borer, and fifteen other kinds of insects, including the San Jose scale, dispose of $2,000,000 worth of peaches every season. The apple-tree borer does for the apple tree what the peach borer does for the peach tree.

In 1926 L. O. Howard, writing in Natural History, said:

It is estimated that the money loss from the work of insects in the United States exceeds two billion dollars yearly. To put it in other words, insects in this country nullify the expended labor of a million men. They destroy, in their feeding, from one-tenth to onefifth of all the crops planted. They carry and spread plant diseases which destroy an additional percentage of our crops. They damage stored food and other food products. They transmit certain diseases to man, reducing his economic efficiency to the extent of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. They lessen the value of his cattle and of his other domestic animals by direct parasitism or by the carriage of disease; and in many other ways are destructive to his interests.

Insects Thrive on Man’s Work

The better the shape man gets the earth into, the easier it is for the insects to live. The insect can survive long periods of famine and extremes of heat and cold. His young are born with a knowledge of the trade at which they will make a living, while man works till he is twenty-one trying to get something into his head, and when he has finally got it somebody else invents a machine that makes his knowledge of no value.

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