328 Voyage of the Novara. 



Lagune there is also found yet a fourth kind of boat, tlie 

 Parahoj the principle of which, as well as the name, has 

 obviously been borrowed from the Malay Prahu^ which it 

 closely resembles in form and mode of steering. 



On the Pasig there is a constant and amazing tide of 

 human activity. Nimiberless boats pass and repass, some 

 bound for the city, to supply it with provisions and other 

 necessary articles, even to drinking-water, which has to be 

 shipped in casks at a considerable distance, others returning 

 with all sorts of purchases made in Manila, for the supply of 

 the various residents on the shores of the Lagune with the 

 necessaries of life. On this voyage we got a sight of num- 

 bers of grackles (^Pastor Boseti), the well-known grasshop- 

 per-destroyer, which, about five years before, had been in- 

 troduced from China at considerable expense, with the view 

 of extirpating this formidable locust. But since these birds, 

 to kill which is punishable by imprisonment, have become 

 acclimatized, they seem to have lost all relish for grasshoppers, 

 sitting quiet and unmoved on the trees and roofs of the 

 houses, while swarms of locusts are disporting under their 

 very eyes. Apparently the number of these destructive 

 insects is less great in China than in Manila, where these 

 voracious wanderers often appear in dense swarms, which, 

 in the shape of blacli clouds, absolutely obscure the day- 

 light ! Probably, too, their means of sustenance is much 

 more limited in China than in the Philippines, where these 

 birds, being in fact treated as tame animals, and fairly do- 



i 



