Zoobyy>~\ NATURAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. [Insects. 



the great jumping posterior pair being held up in ordinary slow 

 walking. This is perhaps the reason why Moses counts the 

 locusts amongst four-footed animals that may be eaten. 



The long boring ovipositor of the Grasshoppers is replaced in 

 the Locusts by four short conical plates, two above and two 

 below, the upper ones a little concave above, the lower conoidal. 

 Another general peculiarity of the Locustidce in which they differ 

 from the Grasshoppers is the great width of the middle and hinder 

 sternal pieces of the thorax, separating widely the middle and 

 hinder legs of the right side from those of the left side. 



The wonderful migrations of countless millions of individuals of 

 several species of this group — the Locusts — at certain times of the 

 year, in various countries, especially North Africa, Arabia, India, 

 China, and even the warm parts of Europe, have been the subjects 

 of records the most ancient, interesting, and important of all popular 

 references to insects. In most of the countries named, the flights 

 or migrations are approximately from E. to W. (in Victoria they 

 are generally from N. to S.), chiefly carried on by the action of 

 strong winds blowing at the time, as the power of the wings for 

 flight is not great, and the creatures seem to have little or no power 

 of directing their flight, so that the great clouds of locusts raised, 

 and mainly carried, by the wind are unable to avoid a river in their 

 course ; and as each individual's flight is for the most part short, the 

 insects falling into such rivers are in many cases described as 

 forming putrefying heaps of dead bodies many feet high and many 

 miles long, creating a pestilence, while the flight itself often darkens 

 the noon-day sky so that one could not see to read in the houses 

 for hours. When they all alight, as they do at sundown, every 

 trace of green vegetation disappears as if by magic, from the 

 action of their voracious jaws, the places where they pass seeming 

 as if burnt up — the Latin name Locusta being derived (locis uatis) 

 from the parched arid appearance wherever they have been. In 

 nearly all ancient writers the popular or local names of Locusts 

 have reference to their appearance in myriads, or their destructive 

 voracity. For instance, the old Hebrew name for these, Arbch, 

 refers to their multitude at the times of migration ; in Sanskrit, 



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