Z p94-] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 239 



bje mark upon the extraordinary number that drifted that clay 

 o yer our heads. St. John the Baptist is said to have supported 

 existence upon that sort of " locust" which grows on the carob 

 t r ee, a kind of sweet bean; but this is very probably a mistake 

 o j" the commentators, who did not wish history to feed so distin- 

 o-fiished a character upon a diet so disgusting. Probably he, too, 

 at :e dried grasshoppers, for there is no doubt whatever that East- 

 ei - ners have already retaliated upon these devourers of their crops 

 bf in turn devouring them. No better proof is wanted of this 

 t^an the constant practice of the Arabs to-day, and that verse in 

 Leviticus which runs, " Thou mayest eat the locust after his kind, 

 t j-ie bald locust after his kind, the beetle after his kind, and the 

 o-rasshopper after his kind." 



The flying plague passed away almost as quickly as it had 

 C( 3me, disappearing over Jezreel and the Jordan in the same long, 

 l^w brown cloud. But the earth remained for a long time strewn 

 w ith them, almost as closely as if none had taken wing. Every 

 Depression in the ground, every horse-hoof mark, was filled with 

 (jpzens or scores of them, spitting a green juice and always head 

 tc ) wind; and what we observed was nothing be it remembered 

 C( Dmpared to the flights witnessed in southern Africa and else- 

 w here. Borrow, in his travels, speaks of the ground being cov- 

 e ,"ed by them over an area of 2000 square miles. Travelers tell 

 o f wide rivers, the water of which becomes invisible on account 

 o f the dead bodies of these insects floating on the surface. The 

 Albert Nyanza is called by the natives the " Muta Nzigi," or 

 < lake of the white locusts," from the enormous masses of these 

 c features which drown in its waves and are washed up on its 

 s pores in pestiferous heaps. That is the worst of the locust. In 

 Inhabited countries it is almost more dreadful dead than alive 

 poisoning the cattle and spreading disease. It must be, however, 

 a p excellent manure in desolate regions, and no doubt, in some 

 w onderful way of nature, manages to expiate its ravages by its 

 a gricultural usefulness. In Cyprus the English government has 

 w aged a long and costly war with this Gryllus migratorius, but 

 \{ anybody had sat with us at lunch that clay upon the hill in 

 psdraelon, it seems to me he would have backed the locusts 

 a gainst the strongest and richest government that ever went to 

 vv r ar with its winged host. 



