IXDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 221 



emerge from their arid deserts and pitch their tents in 

 the desolated plains^. 



The noise the locusts make when engaged in the 

 work of destruction has been compared to the sound of 

 a flame of fire driven by the wind, and the effect of 

 their bite to that of fire''. A wild poet of our day has 

 very strikingly described the noise produced by their 

 flight and approach : 



"Onward (hey came a dark contiMuous cloud 

 Of congregated myriads numberless, 

 The rushing of whose wings was as the sound 

 Of a broad river headlong in its course 

 Plung'd from a mountain summit, or the roar 

 Of a wild ocean in the autumn storm 

 Shattering its billows on a sliore of rocks<=!" 



But no account of the appearance and ravages of these 

 terrific insects, for correctness and sublimity, comes 

 near that of the prophet Joel, " A day of darkness 

 and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick dark- 

 ness, as the morning- spread upon the mountains : a 

 great people and a strong : there hath not been ever 

 the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the 

 years of many generations. A fire devoureth before 

 them ; and behind them a flame burnetii : the land is 

 as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them 

 a desolate wilderness ; yea, and nothing shall escape 

 them. Like the noise of chariots'* on the tops of 

 mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of 



' Jackson's Travels in Morocco, 5-1. * See Bochart, Hierczoic. P. ii. 

 1. iv. c. 5. 474-5. ' Southey's Thalaba,\. 169, 



" Of the symbolical locusts in the Apocalypse it is said — "And the 

 sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots, of many horses running- 

 to battle." ix. 9. 



