INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 215 



furnished for the execution of its office. It is armed 

 with two pair of very strong jaws, the upper termina- 

 ting in short and the lower in long teeth, by which it 

 can both lacerate and grind its food — its stomach is of 

 extraordinary capacity and powers — its hind legs enable 

 it to leap to a considerable distance, and its ample vans 

 are calculated to catch the wind as sails, and so to carry 

 it sometimes over the sea ; and although a single indi- 

 vidual can effect but little evil, yet when the entire 

 surface of a country is covered by them, and every one 

 makes bare the spot on which it stands, the mischief 

 produced may be as infinite as their numbers. So well 

 do the Arabians know their power, that they make a 

 locust say to Maliomet — " We are the army of the 

 Great God ; we produce ninety-nine eggs ; if the hun- 

 dred were completed, we should consume the whole 

 earth and all that is in it^." 



Since it is possible you may not bave paid particular 

 attention to the accounts given by various authors both 

 ancient and modern, of the almost incredible injury 

 done to the human race by these creatures, I shall now 

 lay before you some of the most striking particulars of 

 their devastations that 1 have been able to collect. 



The earliest plague of this kind which has been re- 

 corded, appears also to have been the most direful in 

 its immediate effects that ever was inflicted upon any 

 nation. I am speaking, as you may well suppose, of the 

 locusts with which the Egyptian tyrant and his people 

 were visited for their oppression of the Israelites. Only 

 conceive to yourself a country so covered by them that 

 no one can see the face of the ground — a whole land 



'^ Bochart, ubi supr. c, 6. 485. 



