166 THE LOCUST. 



Behold this furious impulse for the propagation of their devouring pro- 

 geny. No power on earth can interrupt it. Millions upon millions, 

 Avith most fatal industry, deposit their innumerable eggs in every field, 

 plain, forest and desert. This done they vanish like the morning mist. 

 l^pt in six or seven weeks, the very dust seems to waken into life, and, 

 moulded into maggots, begin to creep. Soon this animated dust is trans- 

 formed into minute grasshoppers, which, by some strange instinct, all 

 creep and hop in the same direction, devouring every thing in the line 

 of march. After a few days, this voracious appetite palls ; they become 

 sluggish, and fast, like the silk worms. Like the silk worms, they are 

 said to repeat these fasts four times before they have passed through all 

 their transmutations, and are accommodated with wings. I do not re- 

 member to have seen this circumstance mentioned by any naturalist. 



The references to the habits and characteristics of the locusts in the 

 Bible, arc numerous and accurate. The prophet Joel says, ' He hath 

 laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree ; he hath made it clean bare, 

 and cast it away ; the branches thereof are made white.' These lo- 

 custs stripped the vines, in a few hours, of every leaf and cluster of 

 grapes, and of every green thing. Large fig orchards were 'made clean 

 bare.' Not a leaf remained, and, as the bark of the fig tree is of a sil- 

 very whiteness, the whole orchards thus rifled of their green robes, 

 spread abroad their branches 'made white,' in melancholy nakedness, 

 to the burning sun. Contemplating the utter desolation which they ef- 

 fect, the prophet exclaims, 'Alas for the day! For the day of tlie Lord 

 is at hand,au(l as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. Is not 

 the meat cut off before our eyes?' This is emphatically true. I saw 

 a large vineyard, loaded with the promise of an abundant vintage, strip- 

 ped bare in a very short lime, literally 'cut off before our eyes.' Again, 

 'Ilow do the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because 

 they have no pasture; yea the flocks of sheep are made desolate.' 

 This is not more poetical than just. A field, over which this flood of 

 desolation has swept, shows not a blade for even a goat to nip. 'The 

 land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate 

 wilderness-, yea, and nothing shall escape them.' Every green thing 

 vanishes as if by magic ; nor is any weed too bitter ibr their omnivorous 

 appetite. 'They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall 

 lilie men of war ; and they shall march every one on his ways, and 

 they shall not break their ranks.' When the front 'ranks' of this 

 mighty host reached the lofty palace of the Emir Asaad, they did not 

 break tlicir ranks, nor wheel round the corners, but climbed the wall 

 like men of war, and marched over the tup of it. And so also a living 



