ORDER III. STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS. 108 



the then wingless Grasshoppers which inundated the Desert 

 Prairies between Kiew and Odessa, and between the Don 

 and the Wolga toward Astrakhan and the Caucasus, and 

 which in the following months of May and June would 

 have full-grown wings, and would then fly in endless 

 swarms toward the north in order to devour the luxuriant 

 crops of the well-cultivated fields, meadows, and orchards 

 of those States. " I was traveling in great haste, going about 

 14 versts, or eight English miles, per hour, night and day 

 (which was then considered great speed), when I was sud* 

 denly checked in my speed in the desert prairie lands about 

 50 miles behind Kiew. Here the ground, as far as the eye 

 could reach, was covered with wingless Grasshoppers, near- 

 ly two inches long, and lying piled up one upon another 

 to the height of two feet. Of course the carriage dragged 

 heavily, as if drawn through a deep mould, which prevented 

 the horses from trotting or even walking fast, and the re- 

 volving wheels were constantly covered from two to three 

 inches high with mashed Grasshoppers. This state of 

 things continued through the government of Ekatharinoslaw 

 and Cherson to the Black Sea, a distance of about 400 

 miles. The sight of such an immense number of the most 

 destructive and rapacious insects justly occasioned a mel- 

 ancholy foreboding of famine and pestilence, in case they 

 should invade the cultivated and populous countries of Rus- 

 sia and Poland ; and they certainly would have caused such 

 a disaster had not active measures been taken to prevent 

 it. It was in this instance that the Emperor Alexander 

 sent an army of thirty thousand soldiers to destroy an army 

 of Grasshoppers. The soldiers forming a line of several 

 hundred miles, and advancing toward the south, attacked 

 them not with sword and gun, but with more ancient im- 

 plements, with shovels. They collected them, as far as pos- 

 sible, in sacks and burned them. Notwithstanding this, I 

 found, on my arrival in the Crimea, in the middle of June, 



