LOCUSTID^E — LOCUSTS. 11 T 



The noise Locusts make when engaged in the work of 

 destruction has been compared to the sound of a flame of 

 fire driven by the wind, and the effect of their bite to that of 

 fire,^ Volney says: "The noise they make, in browsing on 

 the trees and herbage, may be heard at a great distance, and 

 resembles that of an array foraging in secret." His follow- 

 ing sentence may also be introduced here: "The Tartars 

 themselves are a less destructive enemy than these little ani- 

 mals.'" Robbins compares their noise to that of small pigs 

 when eating corn.^ The noise produced by their flight and 

 approach, the poet Southey has strikingly described : 



Onward they came a dark continuous cloud 

 Of congregated myriads numberless, 

 The rushing of whose wings was as the sound 

 Of a broad river headlong in its course 

 Plunged from a mountain summit, or the roar 

 Of a wild ocean in the autumn storm. 

 Shattering its billows on a shore of rocks!* 



Another comparison may be introduced here, to give some 

 idea of the infinite numbers of these insects. Dr. Clarke 

 compares a cloud of them to a flight of snow when the 

 flakes are carried obliquely by the wind. They covered his 

 carriage and horses, and the Tartars assert that people are 

 sometimes suffocated by them. The whole face of nature 

 might have been described as covered with a living veil. 

 They consisted of two species — Locusta tariarica and L. 

 migratoria ; the first is almost twice the size of the second, 

 and, because it precedes it, is called by the Tartars the 

 herald or messenger.^ 



In the Account of the admirable Voyage of Domingo 

 Gonsales, the little Spaniard, to the World of the Moon, by 

 Help of several Gansa's, or large Geese, we find the follow- 

 ing : " One accident more befel me worth mention, that during 

 my stay, I say, I saw a kind of a reddish cloud coming to- 

 ward me, and continually approaching nearer, which, at last, 

 I perceived, was nothing but a huge swarm of Locusts. He 

 that reads the discources of learned men concernino; them 



1 A^ide Bochart, Hierozoic, L. IV. c. 5, 474-5. 



2 Volney, Trav., i. 304. 



3 Robbins' Journal, p^228. 

 * Southey's Thalaba, i. 171. 

 6 Clarke's Travels, i. 348. 



11* 



