LOCUSTS. 17 



intervals, upon something of more edible description,, in the 

 way of breakfast, dinner, or supper. With most naturalists 

 he has the reputation of being altogether a carnivorous animal 

 a snapper-up of unwary flies, and a feeder upon luscious 

 caterpillars ; others consider his staple food, as well as that of 

 his domestic relative, to be entirely of a vegetable description ; 

 but the fact would seem that, as with our own convenient 

 appetites, the families both of grasshopper and cricket can 

 accommodate their taste to circumstances. 



The family of Locustida (locusts), though, as before noticed, 

 often confounded with that of Grijllida (grasshoppers), are 

 distinguishable from them by the inferior length of their 

 antennoe, which are generally shorter by half than the body ; 

 also, by the absence in the female insect of the sword-shaped 

 instrument employed, where given, to inter eggs within the 

 ground.* 



That prince of insect destroyers, the Migratory Locust, has 

 appeared occasionally in Britain, also in the environs of Paris, 

 as well as in southern Europe ; but it is in Asia and Africa, 

 chiefly in Barbary and Egypt, that the locust armies are known 

 as mightiest of insect scourges. To give here any copied 

 account of their destructive operations comes not within our 

 province, any more than (happily !) within theirs our fertile 

 isle of Britain. As regards the desolating mischief, and the 

 ordered mode of their warfare in the East, none need want 



* See Vignette. 



