ORDER IIl.—STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS. 103 
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, 
