100 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 
individual can effect but comparatively little injury, yet 
when the entire surface of a country is covered with myr- 
iads of them, and each one makes bare the spot on which it 
stands, the evil produced by them must be as immense as 
their numbers. So well do the Arabians know and feel 
their power, that one of their Poets represents a Grasshop- 
per saying to Mohammed, “ We are the army of the great 
God! we have power to consume the whole world and all 
that is in it!” 
Many ancient and modern authors have given accounts 
of the almost incredible injuries done to the human race by 
these creatures; but no one, I believe, has ever yet related 
that it has actually been necessary to send an army of 
30,000 soldiers against them in order to prevent their ray- 
ages—a fact which happened under my own observation, 
and which I shall soon relate. 
The earliest records we have concerning the appearance 
of Grasshoppers on the earth is found in the Bible, where 
they are mentioned as one of the Plagues of Egypt. That 
country was then so covered with them that the surface of 
the ground could not be seen, and all the trees and herbs 
were destroyed by them. We find this account in the Sec- 
ond Book of Moses, chapter 10th. ‘ And the Grasshop- 
pers went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all 
the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they. . . . For they 
covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was 
darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all 
the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there re- 
mained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of 
the field, through all the land of Egypt.” 
It will be noticed that I have substituted the word 
‘**Grasshoppers” for the word “ Locusts,’”’ as it occurs in 
our English version of the Bible; but I have before shown 
that the latter word is incorrect, and that the animal desig- 
nated in Scripture was not similar to our locust or cicada, 
