STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS. 143 



ful history ; perhaps more so than any other insect. 

 It is the same insect whose mode of life and whose 

 ravages have excited the curiosity of Naturalists, as 

 well as Historians in all ages. It is armed with two 

 pair of very strong jaws by which it can both lacerate 

 and grind its food, and although a single individual can 

 effect but comparatively little injury, yet when the 

 entire surface of a country is covered with myriads of 

 them, and each one makes bare the spot on which it 

 stands, the evil produced by them must be as immense 

 as their numbers. So well do the Arabians know and 

 feel their power, that one of their Poets represents a 

 Grasshopper, saying to Mahomet : " We are the army 

 of the great God ! we have power to consume the 

 whole world and all that is in it !" 



Many ancient and modern authors have given ac- 

 counts of the almost incredible injuries done to the 

 human race by these creatures, but no one, I believe, 

 has ever yet related that it has actually been neces- 

 sary to send an army of 30,000 soldiers against them, 

 in order to prevent their ravages. A fact which hap- 

 pened under my own observation and which I shall 

 soon relate. 



The earliest records we have concerning the ap- 

 pearance of Grasshoppers on the earth is found in the 

 Bible, where they are mentioned as one of the Plagues 

 of Egypt. That country was then so covered with 

 them that the surface of the ground could not be seen, 



