148 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



invade the cultivated and populous countries of Russia 

 and Poland. And they certainly would have caused 

 such a disaster had not active measures been taken to 

 prevent it. It was in this instance that the Emperor 

 Alexander sent an army of thirty thousand soldiers 

 to destroy an army of Grasshoppers. The soldiers 

 forming a line of several hundred miles, and advancing 

 toward the South, attacked them not with sword and 

 gun, but with more ancient implements, with shovels. 

 They collected them as far as possible in sacks and burnt 

 them. Notwithstanding this, I found on my arrival 

 in the Crimea, in the middle of June, that numbers 

 had escaped, acquired their wings and had already 

 destroyed a great part of the vegetation. 



But the more majestic view of one of their flying 

 swarms presented itself to me in Asia, in the Island 

 of Phanagoria, after having crossed the Black Sea, 

 at Panticapacura, the modern city of Kertsch, on 

 the Bosphorus. This Island is the residence of 

 the Cossacks of the Black Sea, who on that account 

 are called in the Russian language Tsckernomorski, 

 Black Sea Islanders. Soon after my arrival in that 

 country, and while continuing my travels, I saw 

 before me at a distance of about five miles, near the 

 City of Tutmarakan, several thick and solid columns, 

 arising perpendicularly from the ground, like the 

 smoke of a volcano, which at the height of five hun- 

 dred feet assumed the form of heavy, dark clouds. 



