( ox’) 
Colonial Office, reporting the occurrence of vast swarms of 
locusts at Aburi and Accra, West Africa, in February last :— 
‘Government House, Christiansborg Castle, 
Accra, 27th February, 18998. 
My Lord, 
It may be interesting to your Lordship to be in- 
formed that on Thursday, the 28rd instant, I received a 
telegram from the Curator at Aburi stating that the entire 
station was covered over by vast swarms of locusts, and that 
he feared they would be very destructive to the plants in the 
garden. On the following morning, at 10.15, the Colonial 
Secretary called my attention by telephone to a vast swarm 
of locusts that was approaching Accra in the form of a semi- 
circle from the north, the middle appearing to be in the 
vicinity of the Governor's lodge, two miles north-east from 
Accra; they extended east and west as far as the eye could 
see. The sky in one direction could only be seen through the 
dark cloud of these insects. Their numbers were simply 
beyond all calculation. They appeared to occupy a space 
about two miles wide, and from a quarter of a mile to a mile 
in height. They gradually came round in a semicircular 
direction curving from Accra towards the Governor's lodge, 
going on to Labadi, and keeping as close to the sea as the 
grass extended on the sand. On a long plain between the 
lagoon by Christiansborg Castle, extending towards Labadi, 
about a mile long and quarter of a mile wide, they descended 
like a vast covering, and consumed the grass on the plain, 
leaving the harder portions brown and dried up. I am sorry 
to say that they took a fancy to the cocoa-nut trees which I 
planted some years ago in the land attached to the Castle, 
and literally stripped the leaves that hung above the bunches 
of fruit, the midribs only remaining. During this time there 
was not a breath of wind; the sun was shining brightly, the 
heat was intense, and the locusts for a while had their own 
way. At one time the roofs of the Secretariat and of the 
huts at Victoriaborg, which can always be seen distinctly 
from the Castle, which is a mile and a quarter distant, were 
completely hid from view by the vastness of the number of 
