508 Extracts from the Minute- Book of the Linnean Society. 
they are furnished with wings; but they still remain 
leaping, though with additional power, being now as- 
sisted by their wings. ‘Towards the end of the month 
and about the beginning of July, they cast off the whole 
of their upper hard covering, and become perfect flying 
Locusts. In this state they are exceedingly destructive, 
even to places at great distances ; for their flight is rapid, 
and they are in such prodigious swarms, that their ap- 
pearance in the air resembles a dense black cloud, 
obscuring the sun's rays, which when they penetrate, 
make these swarms appear like some object burning in 
the atmosphere. Alighting on the corn-fields, they in 
the space of a few hours devour every green thing, and 
convert immense tracts of cultivated land into absolute 
deserts, while nothing seems to impede their progress. 
-  * [n August the Locusts are observed busily twining 
themselves in pairs upon the ground: they are then in 
the act of copulation. In September they pierce, by 
means of their tail, small holes in the earth, in which 
they deposit their eggs in small bags, rapidly flapping 
their wings at the same time. Soon after this opera- 
tion the insect dies. 
* Various methods have been adopted to destroy the 
insect, either by ploughing the fields, and collecting the 
eggs ; or, in the spring, at the dawn of day, while the in- 
sect is yet in the crawling state, by setting fire to straw 
which has been thrown over the locust-hillocks ; or by 
sweeping them into sacks and destroying them. In the 
leaping state wide sacks are employed, into which they 
are driven by a person furnished with a broom ; or by 
means of deep trenches dug in the field, into which they 
l are 
