12 HISTORY OF INSECTS. 



very perceptibly larger than the eggs which contained them. 

 They precisely resemble the parent in structure and habit, 

 except that they are without wings ; they also differ in co- 

 lour, being perfectly white. The care of the mother does 

 not cease with the hatching of the eggs : the young ones 

 run after her wherever she moves, and she continues to sit 

 on them and brood over them with the greatest affection 

 for many days. If the young ones are disturbed or scat- 

 tered, or if the parent is taken away from them, she will, on 

 the first opportunity, collect them again, and brood over 

 them as carefully as before, allowing them to push her 

 about, and cautiously moving one foot after another, for 

 fear of hurting them. How the young ones ai-e fed until 

 the mother's care for them has ceased, does not appear to 

 have been ascertained ; for it is not until they are nearly 

 half grown that they are seen feeding on vegetables with 

 the rest. 



History of the Locust.^ — The locust, from the remotest 

 ages, has had a greater power to injure man, than any other 

 living creature. Its course is almost invariably accompanied 

 by famine and pestilence : man is armed with no power to 

 resist it. The locust was sent as a plague to the Egyi)tians, 

 especially to punish them for their detention and oppression 

 of the Israelites : the whole face of the country was covered 

 by their multitudes. Afterwards, about the date 200 B.C., 

 we have it on record, that locusts again swarmed in the 

 same part of Africa, St. Augustin mentions another enor- 

 mous swarm in the same region, which devoured every green 

 leaf, and, eventually reaching the sea, perished by drown- 

 ing : the mass of their corrupted bodies created so great 

 a stench, that a pestilence ensued which cai-ried oflf nearly 

 a million human beings. We are told by Mouffet, that in 



* Authority : — Kirby and Spcnce's ' Introduction to Eiitomology.' 



