610 Supposed Connection of Meteoric Phenomena, 



hlacJc rat is said to have multiplied in equal proportion. * 

 (See VII. 193—195.) 



The American journals also mention, that in the month of 

 June, 1834, many parts of the United States were troubled with 

 an incursion oi locusts; which did much damage, and seemed 

 to be called up from the earth, in incredible numbers, by the 

 very means taken to destroy them. The statement is further 

 increased by the assertion, that a similar inroad of locusts 

 occurs every seventeen years, (VIL 196., and 308, 309.) 



In Hungary, during the same month, miUions of beetles 

 appeared; devouring the vegetation wherever they came, and 

 increasing in proportion to the means taken to smoke them 

 to death. 



The Island of Grenada, and some other of the West India 

 Islands, have also, during the spring of the present year, been 

 incredibly ravaged by the cane Jly (a species of Cicada L,in,^ 

 [Z)elphax saccharivora Westwood, see VI. 407 — 413., VII. 

 496.], which has destroyed two thirds of the crops. One 

 gentleman stated recently, at a meeting of the Entomological 

 Society, that this pest was immediately preceded by a violent 

 hurricane, [See VII. 496.] 



M. Huber, in his Memoirs of the Natural History of Ge- 

 neva, states that a huge column of the Vanessa cardui, in 

 June, 1826, passed over the Canton de Vaud ; traversing the 

 country, with great rapidity, from n. to s. Professor Bonelli 

 of Turin, as well as M. Huber, observed, in March of the 

 same year, a similar swarm of the same species, also directing 

 their flight from n. to s., in Piedmont, in such immense num- 

 bers, that, at night, the flowers were literally covered with 

 them. They had been traced from Coni, Raconi, Susa, &c. 

 A similar flight, at the end of the last century, is recorded 

 by M. de Loche, in the Memoif^s of the Academy of Turin, 

 The fact is the more worthy of notice, because the caterpillars 

 of this butterfly are not gregarious, but solitary from the 

 moment they are hatched : and this instinct remains dormant 

 while generation after generation passes away ; till it suddenly 

 displays itself in full energy, when their numbers happen to 

 be in excess." f Mr. Bennett, also, in his Journal of Natural 



* It would appear that the assertion of Arnobius (VII. 195.) is not with- 

 out a comment in various allusions of the poets; for the ancients, who, 

 like French cooks, dressed up their fables in such a way that they are 

 scarcely to be recognised as originating in facts, gave to Apollo the name of 

 Sniintheus (Iliad, i. 39.) ; which, according to the critics, was derived from 

 the Phrygian word for viice or 7'ats, the god having destroyed a great num- 

 ber of those creatures which infested that country. 



f Mag. Nat. Hist., i. 387.; also Lyell's Geology, \\. 114. [The late 

 Rev. Lansdown Guilding had thus remarked, in a note, lying by us, on 

 the mention in our 1. 387.: — " I have lately recorded, in the Zoologi- 



