302 



THE IX SECT WORLD. 



clouds, even hiding the sun. As far and as wide as the eye can read 

 the sky is black, and the soil is inundated with them. The noise o 

 these millions of v/ings may be compared to the sound of a cataract 

 When this fearful army alights upon the ground, the branches of th{ 

 trees break, and in a few hours, and over an extent of many leagues 

 all vegetation has disappeared, the wheat is gnawed to its very roots 

 the trees are stripped of their leaves. Everything has been destroyed 

 gnawed down, and devoured. When nothing more is left, the terriblii 

 host rises, as if in obedience to some given signal, and takes it' 

 departure, leaving behind it despair and famine. It goes to look fo 

 fresh food — seeking whom, or rather in this case, what it ma 

 devour ! (Plate VIII.) 



During the year succeeding that in which a country has bee 

 devastateci by showers of locusts, damage from these insects is th 

 less to be feared ; for it happens often that after having ravage 

 everything, they die of hunger before the laying season begins. Br 

 their death becomes the cause of a greater evil. Their innumerabl 

 carcases, lying in heaps and heated by the sun, are not long i 

 entering into a state of putrefaction ; epidemic disease, caused by th 

 poisonous gases emanating from them, soon break out, and decimal 

 the populations. These locusts are bred in the deserts of Arab 

 and Tartary, and the east winds carry them into Africa and Europ 

 Ships in the eastern parts of the Mediterranean are sometimt 

 covered with them at a great distance from the land. 



It is related in the Bible, in the tenth chapter of Exodus, th 

 Jehovah commanded Moses to stretch forth his hand to make locus 

 (Arbeth) come over the whole land of Egypt as the eighth plagu 

 destined to intimidate Pharaoh, who had rebelled against Hii 

 These insects arrived, brought by an east wind, and covered tl 

 surface of the country to such a degree that the air was darkened I 

 them.* 



They ate up all the herbs of the field and all the fruit of the tre 

 which the hail (the seventh plague) had left. A west wind swe 



* *' And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lc 

 Jjrought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night ; and when 

 was morning, the east wind brought the locusts. And the locusts went up over 

 the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt : very grievous were the 

 'before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such, f 

 they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened ; and tl 

 did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had le 

 and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the fie 

 through all the land of Egypt."— ExoD. x. 13— 15. 



