122 The TjOcuM in C)/j>rffs 



plateau cut up by deep river gorges, is noteworthy in the possession of 

 a factory where wine is made on modern methods and spirits are distilled. 

 The Perapedhi port is well known in the island among the British resi- 

 dents but the firm being largely German, although under British manage- 

 ment, and the output going to Hamburg meant the closing down of 

 operations before the vintage of 1915. Up to a late date the manager 

 hoped to run as usual and to profit by the entry of Greece into the war 

 on the Allies' side. This would have meant the flooding of the Alexandria 

 market with cheap Greek wines, the lowering of the prices of the native 

 Cyprus wines and the consequent abiUty of the Perapedhi Wine Company 

 to buy large quantities at cheap rates from which the firm would have 

 been able to distil spirit at a good profit. But this was not to be and 

 the manager, like many others in their outposts of civilisation, left the 

 island to take up war work in the old country. His garden, which 

 sheltered a swarm of locusts one morning for a few hours, was a wonderful 

 example of productiveness under intelligent management, and of what 

 could be grown in the way of fruit trees which would resist severe 

 winters. 



The following quotation from the travel observations of Dr Thomas 

 Shaw on the Syrian locust may close these notes. His life on the 

 southern shores of the Mediterranean gave him good opportunities of 

 observing them. "Those," he says, "which I saw in 1724 and 1725, 

 were much bigger than our common grasshoppers, and had brown 

 spotted wings, with legs and bodies of a bright yellow. Their first 

 appearance was towards the latter end of March, the wind having been 

 for some time from the south. In the middle of April their numbers 

 were so vastly increased, that in the heat of the day they formed them- 

 selves into large and numerous swarms, flew in the air like a succession 

 of clouds ; and, as the prophet Joel expresses it, they darkened the sun. 

 When the wind blew briskly, so that these swarms were crowded by 

 others, or thrown one upon another, we had a lively idea of that com- 

 parison of the Psalmist, of being tossed up and down as the locust." 



