182 NATURAL HISTORY. [cH. XII. 



the others enticed them to join them, and thus their 

 numbers increasing daily, they took circular flights 

 of thirty or forty yards square until they were 

 joined by the rest ; and after miserably laying waste 

 their native fields, they proceeded elsewhere in 

 large troops. Wherever those troops happened to 

 pitch, they spared no sort of vegetable ; they ate up 

 the young corn and the very grass; but nothing 

 was more dismal than to behold the land in which 

 they were hatched, for they so greedily devoured 

 every green thing thereon before they could fly, that 

 they" left the ground quite bare. * Different methods 

 are to be employed against them, according to their 

 age and state ; for some will be effectual as soon as 

 they are hatched, others when they begin to crawl, 

 others, in fine, when they begin to fly ; and expe- 

 rience has taught us here in Transylvania that it 

 would have been of great service to have diligently 

 sought out the places where the females lodged, for 

 nothing was more easy than to have carefully vis- 

 ited those places in March and April, and to destroy 

 their eggs and the little worms with sticks and 

 briers, or, if they were not to be beat out of the 

 bushes, dunghills, and heaps of straw, to set fire to 

 them ; and this method would have been very easy, 

 convenient, and successful, as it has been in other 

 places ; but in summer, after they have marched 

 out of their spring quarters, and invaded the corn- 

 fields, &c., it is almost impossible to extirpate them 

 without thoroughly thrashing the whole piece of 

 land that harbours them with sticks or flails, and 

 thus crushing the locust with the produce of the 

 land. Finally, when the corn is ripe, or nearly so, 

 we have found, to our great loss, that there is no 

 other method of getting rid of them, or even dimin- 

 ishing their number, but to surround the piece of 

 ground with a nmltitude of people, who might fright 

 them away with bells, brass vessels, and all other 

 sorts of noise. But even this method will not sue- 



