THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 271 



their striking hiin. They were making their way towards 

 Adelaide, passing in solid phalanx towards the south-west. 

 A few stragglers remained in the squares and streets, appa- 

 rently too much fatigued to continue the advance, but the 

 main body kept standing or covering a space extending over 

 many hundred yards in length and many yards in breadth. 

 The citizens flocked out from their houses to witness the 

 unusual sight, and examined with interest the solitary locusts 

 that remained behind. They appeared to be of the ordinary 

 type, but of large size and wonderfully strong in the wing. 

 Another huge swarm of locusts visited the city on Sunday, 

 December 17th, alighting in various parts of the Park Lands 

 and in private gardens, where in a Aery short time they left 

 marks of their voracity upon vines, fruit-trees, and other 

 specimens of vegetation. A day or two afterwards Mr. 

 Townsend, of Rundle Street, showed us a basket of apricots, 

 or rather stones, to give an idea of the devastation the locusts 

 had caused among some of the gardens at Glynde and in the 

 Torrens Valley. He states that on many trees of American 

 plums there is not a vestige of fruit left, the invading hordes 

 having thoroughly bared the orchards. We have also seen a 

 bunch of potato-tops and a sample of maize, taken from 

 splendid growths in Mr. O. Philp's garden, Chain of Ponds. 

 At ten or eleven o'clock on Monday there was not a solitary 

 specimen of the pest about, but soon after countless myriads 

 arrived, and descended upon a splendid patch of potatoes, 

 varying their diet with other green things. It is rather 

 remarkable, but it is vouched for, that the locusts do not 

 touch thistles. Standing upright in the midst of farmsteads 

 and along the river-bank, where clouds of the creatures have 

 gorged themselves, may be seen splendid samples of the 

 much-abused thistle flourishing while dreariness reigns 

 around. All these are very much like the doings of the 

 locusts of 1844 ; for we find in the old file already referred to 

 the following paragraph : — " During the last few days North 

 Adelaide has been visited by swarms of destructive locusts. 

 In the gardens at the back of Kermode Street they have 

 made great havoc, clearing the vines of their leaves, and 

 eating up the melons and everything else that is green. On 

 Monday the whole neighbourhood was alive with them, their 

 constant fluttering in the air not being unlike the flakes of a 

 heavy snow-storm. Last year they did much damage in this 



