HISTORY OF INSECTS. 13 



the year 591 a swarm of locusts visited Italy; they pursued 

 their destructive course, devouring every thing, until they 

 reached the sea, in which they perished. The pestilence 

 arising from the stench, carried off men and beasts to the 

 number of more than a million. In 1478 the Venetian ter- 

 ritory was visited by a swarm of locusts, which so completely 

 destroyed the crops as to cause a famine, wherein more 

 than thirty thousand persons died of starvation. In 1650, 

 a swarm of locusts entered Russia. As they passed, the air 

 was darkened by their numbers ; they covered the face of 

 the earth ; the trees bent with their weight ; and in some 

 places the mass of their dead bodies was four feet in depth. 

 In 1748 a swarm of locusts visited the Austrian dominions : 

 at Vienna the breadth of the swarm exceeded three miles, 

 and so darkened the air, that one person could not see ano- 

 ther at the distance of twenty paces. Major Moor witnessed 

 in the Mahrattas, the ravages of a swarm of locusts that was 

 five hundred miles in length, and so compact as completely 

 to hide the sun, and occasion darkness. Mr. Barrow re- 

 lates that in Southern Africa, in the years 1784 and 1797, 

 a swarm of locusts covered an area of nearly two thousand 

 square miles. When driven by a north-west wind into the 

 sea, they formed upon the shore, for fifty miles, a bank three 

 or four feet high : the stench from their putrifying bodies 

 was perceptible at the distance of one hundred and fifty 

 miles. In 1778 and 1780, a swarm of locusts visited Mo- 

 rocco ; every green thing was eaten, and a dreadful famine 

 ensuing, such vast numbers of people died of hunger in the 

 streets of the towns, that their bodies lay unburied. 



The egg of the locust is deposited in the ground ; when 

 it is hatched, the larva has all the appearance of a locust in 

 miniature, except that it is without wings. Its work of de- 

 struction immediately commences ; it devours every blade 

 of grass every green leaf it can obtain. In the autumn 



