Our reports of the present localities of the grasshoppers show that Missouri is completely overrun with them. They have left the wheat-fields bare, have stripped the fruit-trees of leaves, buds, and blossoms, and swept even the grass from the pastures as if an army of mowers had been through them. The farmers are panic-stricken. The cattle are dying. Even the earth in flower-pots has resurrected clouds of them. “And yet no power cometh to help us.” The sprouting fields of grain in Nebraska have already been stripped bare to the earth. Millions of grasshoppers have made their appearance, and millions yet remain in the ground to come out eventually. Kansas is in the same plight as Nebraska, and whatever the grasshoppers may happen to leave the chinch-bugs are waiting for, which is not a very hopeful outlook for the corn. From Northwestern Iowa comes the same story; also from various portions of Minnesota. The prospect, therefore, is simply pitiful, and full of distress and discouragement for the farmer. It is an element of destruction against which he can make no provision. He cannot destroy the pests in sufficient numbers to materially reduce their ravages. He cannot relieve the situation by changing the crops; for nothing yet of a vegetable character has been discovered that the grasshopper will not eat. He is condemned, after using all his energy and invention to destroy them, to stand idly by and see millions upon millions of them lay waste his acres and destroy his cereals, his grass and his fruit, leaving nothing in the fall for himself or his stock. The farmers have hitherto contested the situation with resolute courage. They have fought these insects with fire and water. They have gathered them into trenches, and crushed them by thousands with rollers. They have plowed in the eggs so deep as to make resurrection seem hopeless. They have turned in hogs and poultry to feed upon them; but all their efforts have been idle. Where one was killed, a hundred came to the funeral. While the farmer fights them in one spot the air becomes clouded with millions of new arrivals settling down in other spots. There is a small gleam of hope which comes from Nebraska in the announcement that a small red bug has made its appearance there which feeds upon grasshoppers in bulk, and is more than a match for every grasshopper he tackles. We are not inclined, however, to place overmuch confidence in the bug story; at least until we hear further details from him. As there are millions upon millions of grasshoppers to be eaten, there must be millions upon millions of red bugs to eat them. Even granting that the red bug may succeed in devouring the grasshopper, how can we tell that he may not turn about and go to work on the crops next, for a bug that will eat a grasshopper is possessed of an appetite equal to devouring and digesting anything vegetable, animal or mineral? Again, we are not informed as to the locomotive powers of this red bug. Your grasshopper is a good traveler, and does not stop long at his way-stations for refreshment. If it should happen, therefore, that the red bug is not a lively traveler, of course the grasshopper will not remain to be eaten, but pack up and leave his antagonist far in the rear. All things considered, we place but little confidence in the red bug as an annihilator of grasshoppers. What is to be done is a question more easily asked than answered. Cannot the Grangers find its solution? They are the principal ones to be affected when this lively insect gets fairly across the Mississippi and commences his march of destruction and distress across our fertile prairies, with nothing to stay his onward course. Among all these thousands of sons and daughters of Ceres somebody should have wit enough to contrive some method of destroying them. What is to be done, however, must be done quickly. The vast army is headed this way. It eats quickly and travels fast. The buzzing of its wings will soon be heard all about us, and then, in very truth, he will be a burden which must be borne with such equanimity and philosophy as can be summoned. It is evident that some antidote must be found, or else the victim must look out upon his broad acres stripped bare, and console himself with that thinnest of all consolations, that everything is created for some good purpose.—Chicago Tribune, May 18.