222 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



they continued quiet, with little or no motion, during the heat of the 

 sun, but towards evening or sun-set they would all rise, disperse , 

 and fly ahout, with a strange humming noise, much like the beat- 

 ing of drums at some distance, and in such vast incredible numbers, 

 that they darkened the air for the space of two or three miles 

 square. 



' A short while after their coming, they had so entirely eat up 

 and destroyed all the leaves of the trees for some miles round about, 

 that the whole country, though it was in the middle of summer, was 

 left as bare and naked as if it had been in the depth of winter, mak- 

 ing a most unseemly, and, indeed, frightful appearance : and the 

 noise they made whilst they were seizing and devouring this, their 

 prey, was as surprising ; for the grinding of the leaves in the mouths 

 of this vast multitude all together, made a sound very much resem- 

 bling the sawing of timber. Nor were the trees abroad, and the 

 hedges in the field the only sufferers by this vermin ; they came al- 

 so into the gardens, and destroyed the buds, blossoms, and leaves of 

 all the fruit trees, that they were left perfectly naked ; nay, many of 

 them that were more delicate than the rest, lost their sap as well as 

 leaves, and quite withered away, so that they never recovered it 

 again. Nay, their multitude spread so exceedingly, that they dis- 

 turbed men in even their dwellings ; for out of the gardens they got 

 into the houses, where numbers of them crawling about were very 

 irksome, and they would often drop on the meat as it was dressing 

 in the kitchen, and frequently fall from the ceiling of the rooms in- 

 to the dishes as they stood on the table while they ate ; so extreme- 

 ly offensive and loathsome were they, as well as prejudicial and 

 destructive. 



' Nor did the mischievous effects of this pernicious vermin stop 

 here ; their numerous creeping spawn, which they had lodged un- 

 der ground next to the upper sod of the earth, did more harm in 

 that close retirement, than all the flying swarms of their parents 

 had done abroad ; for this young destructive brood did not withhold 

 from what was much more necessary to have been spared, and what 

 their sires had left untouched : these lying under ground, fell to de- 

 vouring the roots of the corn and grass, and eating them up, ruin- 

 ed both the support of man and beast ; for these, losing thoir roots, 

 goon withered and came to nought, to the vast damage of the 

 country, 



* But notwithstanding this plague of vermin did thus mightily pre- 

 vail and infest the country, yet it would have been still more vio- 

 lent, had not its rage been fortunately checked several ways. High 

 winds, wet and misling weather, were extremely disagreeable to 

 the nature of this insect ; arid so prejudicial as to destroy many 

 millions of them in one day's time : whence I gather, that though 

 we have them in these northern moist climates, they are more nat- 

 ural, and more peculiarly belonging to warm and dry countries. 

 Whenever these ill constitutions of the air prevailed, their bodies 

 were so enfeebled, they would let go their holds, and drop to the 



