164 LOCUST. 



do ; and as soon as any of them found them- 

 selves able to use their wings, they soared 

 up, and by flying round the others, enticed 

 them to join them ; and thus their numbers 

 increased daily : they took circular flights of 

 twenty or thirty yards square, until they 

 were joined by the rest; and after miserably 

 laying waste their native fields, they pro- 

 ceeded elsewhere in large troops. Where- 

 soever those troops happened to pitch, they 

 spared no sort of vegetable; they eat up 

 the young corn and the very grass ; but no- 

 thing was more dismal than to behold the 

 lands in which they were hatched ; for they 

 so greedily devoured every thing green 

 thereon, before they could fly, that they left 

 the ground quite bare. 



There is nothing to be feared in those 

 places to which this plague did not reach 

 before the autumn; for the Locusts have 

 not strength to fly to any considerable dis- 

 tance but in the months of July, August, 

 and the beginning of September, and even 

 then, in changing their places of residence, 

 they seem to bend to warm climates. 



Different methods are to be employed, 



