Locust
Locust names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Locust a family of insects allied to the grasshopper and the cricket
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a family of insects allied to the grasshopper and the cricket. The locust has short antennae--shorter than its body This is perhaps the readiest method of telling a locust from a grasshopper. The abdomen of the female is prolonged into a hollow tube or ovipositor. In late summer the locust bores an oval or cylindrical place in the ground with its ovipositor, sometimes in old wood. It lines the cavity with a gummy, rain-proof substance, fills the hole with eggs arranged with the utmost nicety, and plugs up the entrance. By digging up a bare place by the roadside in autumn these rolls of eggs may be found. In prairie countries a field of freshly plowed sod is a favorite place in which to congregate and lay eggs. Plowing, or any other method that exposes the eggs to weather or buries them beyond the reach of the sun, destroys them. When undisturbed, the eggs remain in these nests over winter. In spring the young hoppers appear, looking for all the world like their parents, except that they are small and are without wings. They eat green vegetation and grow rapidly. They molt several times. The male locust is able to make a rasping noise by rubbing his hind legs against the outer surface of his wing covers. This is supposed to be done for the benefit of his mate, to whom the music is pleasing. Several locusts are worth especial mention, though nearly all go under the popular name of grasshopper. The Carolina locust, our largest species, is one and one-half to two inches long, and is common throughout the United States and Canada. It is a dusty hopper, fond of dry roads. When it flies it shows a pair of broad, black hind wings edged with a margin of yellow. The male of the clouded locust, also of good size and abundant in meadows, may be recognized by a crackling sound made by rubbing his wings together when he flies. The redlegged locust is common all over the United States, except in the highlands of the West, where its place is taken by a similar insect, the migratory Rocky Mountain locust, the pest of Western grain fields. Like the army worm, the young hoppers of this species travel in long belts, devouring as they go. When full winged, they rise in swarms. Countless--literally countless millions--fill the air like snowflakes. They fly or drift long distances, and descend when night or unfavorable weather overtakes them. If a flight of locusts descends on a farm, grain and corn fields are reduced to mere stalks in a few hours. Trees are stripped of foliage, and the locusts even scrape the lint from a weatherbeaten board fence until it has a new look. If the swarm encounters fine weather it is likely to rise the next day and go on, but if it remains awhile, and the females fill the soil with their cocoon-like pockets of eggs, the chances are that the young will destroy a second crop the following season. Locusts are apt to confine their eggs to especially favorable plots of ground. By ploughing, harrowing, and exposing the eggs to the weather, many are destroyed, and skillful methods have been devised for destroying the young before they get far from their hatching ground. Fortunately this locust cannot survive more than a generation or two away from its high, semi-arid native home. Locusts are common in Arabia and Africa. The natives catch them for food and eat them fried in butter. Sometimes they are dried in the sun and are ground into a meal used for baking cakes or to thicken soup. The poor of Southern Russia cure them in smoke, like fish. The Jews used to fry locusts in sesame oil. The prophet Joel likens their flight to "the noise of a flame that devoureth the stubble," and the land they pass through is "as the garden of Eden before thee and behind thee a desolate wilderness." See Grasshopper ; Cricket
Locust any migatory species of the orthopterous family Acridiidæ
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
any migatory species of the orthopterous family Acridiidæ, specially Edipoda migratoria, the migratory locust. An allied species, E. cinerascens, is found in the S. E. of Europe. The females excavate holes in the earth and deposit their eggs in a long mass enveloped in a glutinous secretion. The larvæ commence their destructive career almost as soon as they are hatched. The migrations of locusts are probably in search of food. Their range in the Old World stretches from Spain and the S. of France , through Russia to China; S. of this boundary line they are equally destructive. The Rocky Mountain locust is Caloptenus spretus. There seems to be no special periodicity in the appearance of swarms of locusts. Locusts are by preference vegetable-feeders; but they will attack dry animal substances, and even become cannibals when other food fails . Next to man, their chief enemies are insectivorous birds, parasitic beetles of the family Cantharidæ, and dipterous flies of the family Bombyliidæ.
Locust a well known tree belonging to the legume or pea family
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a well known tree belonging to the legume or pea family. It grows to the height of eighty feet. It has thorny branches, delicate pinnate leaves, and dense, drooping clusters of white, heavily scented flowers, shaped like those of the pea. The flowers are succeeded by many-seeded pods. Young plants grow from seeds, as well as from underground suckers, soon forming dense thickets. The wood is heavy, hard, and very durable. It makes excellent fence posts and policemen's clubs. The common locust is known to the botanist as robinia. It is called also the black or yellow locust, and the false acacia. It grows throughout eastern North America . A related shrub from the Alleghanies bears pink flowers. It is cultivated for ornamental purposes. The clammy locust is a small tree with sticky branchlets and leaf-stalks. It grows in the same region. See Honey Locust
Locust SEVENTEEN YEAR, an American Cicada
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SEVENTEEN YEAR, an American Cicada.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The Rocky Mountain locust that Aiton's called in 1910 "the pest of Western grain fields" no longer exists: Melanoplus spretus has not been seen alive since the early 1900s and is now listed as extinct, probably because ploughing and irrigation of its river-valley breeding grounds destroyed the eggs the entry describes. Collier's wrote in 1921 that "there seems to be no special periodicity" in swarms; in that same decade Boris Uvarov's phase theory showed that swarming locusts are not a separate kind of insect but ordinary solitary grasshoppers transformed by crowding, a switch later traced to serotonin in the nervous system. Desert locust plagues are now tracked by satellite and rainfall modelling under the FAO's Desert Locust Information Service and fought with aircraft-sprayed insecticides and fungal biopesticides, though the 2019-21 outbreak across East Africa and southwest Asia showed the problem is far from solved. The black locust tree, praised in 1910 for fence posts and policemen's clubs, is now planted worldwide and ranks among the more troublesome invasive trees in Europe.
Written for this edition, 2026.