THE LOCUST ()F NORTH-WESTERN INDIA. 251 



id prevent the destruction. The struggle with these wingless insects went on 

 for about a month. They appeared continually in different places, though not in 

 very great swarms, and were as regularly beaten down. The total length of bor- 

 der attacked was only about 20 miles long, extending from Dooderia to Chala. 

 Towards the end of August the locusts took flight, and from that time till January 

 they invaded at intervals almost every part of the district. In this stage it appears 

 impossible to destroy them, but it appears possible to prevent them from settling 

 in the crops, if a sufficient number of men can be collected in time. I have 

 frequently seen large swarms of locusts, just settling down, take to flight again 

 when the villagers ran through the fields beating the plants with clothes. It also 

 appears that the firing of guns is useful : a shot fired into a swarm of locusts will 

 immediately clear a space of about F>0 yards in circumference." 



Generally speaking, the people seem not to have made use of the locusts as 



_ , „ , food, though there is evidence to show that they are 



Locusts as human toocl. ° J 



by no means unpalatable. But a large flight which 

 visited Hardoi in Oudh iu June, 1890, was reported by the Deputy Commissioner 

 to have afforded welcome food to the poorer classes. In Dharmsala, also, in 

 November, 1890, the natives were said to have largely utilised the locusts as food; 

 while in the case of the Marwar, Jeysulmere, and Sirohi States of Western Raj- 

 putana, it is reported that, where the Musalmans predominated, the poor collected 

 and boiled the locusts in salt water, obtaining in this way a supply of food both 

 for themselves and for their horses and camels, which will eat the locusts and 

 are said to thrive upon them. 



The entire disappearance of the flights which invaded the North-West Pro- 

 vinces in the cold weather of 1889 indicates that the 



Diseases and natural mo rtalitv amongst the locusts was very much greater 

 enemies of the locusts. - 



than could be accounted lor by the measures adopted 



by the people- The insect is essentially the inhabitant of the desert, and it is un- 

 doubtedly the case that the dampness of the more fertile regions into which it has 

 penetrated is totally unsuited to its constitution, though as yet little is known of 

 the parasitic animals and fungoid diseases by which it is likely to be affected. 

 Some alcoholic specimens indeed from the Red Sea were accompanied by the larvae 

 of a dipterous insect which is likely to have been parasitic upon them, but nothing 

 of the kind has yet been discovered in any of the numerous individuals which 

 have been kept under observation in cages in the Indian Museum. In the case 

 of the flight which visited Calcutta in November, 1890, the insects were very 

 weakly, and were being so rapidly eaten up by birds of all kinds, and especially 

 by kites, that there seemed every probability of their being speedily exterminated 

 by that agency alone. In Rawalpindi also, Captain H. A. Deane wrote that they 

 were much attacked by a yellow wagtail (scientific name not recorded), which was 

 in very unusually large flocks in the district, and congregated wherever locusts 

 were hatched. Bears also in Dharmsala were said to have gorged themselves so 

 thoroughly on the locusts that several of them were shot close to the station. 



