66 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK or NATURE. 



that ancient symbol of mighty conquerors, laying bare 

 country after country, as an overshadowing and dark cloud, 

 pregnant with the wrath of heaven. Their home is in the 

 far East, in places near the desert. There they deposit 

 their eggs in the sand ; when hatched, by the heat of the 

 sun, their young emerge, without wings, from the ground; 

 but when mature, they rise on the first faint breeze that 

 stirs, and fly, under the guidance of a leader, in masses 

 so huge and so dense, that the air is darkened and the 

 sound of their wings heard like the murmur of the distant 

 ocean. In immense flights they travel from the East to 

 the West, penetrating far into the interior of Africa, cross- 

 ing, apparently without difficulty, the wide waters between 

 Africa and Madagascar, and from Barbary to Italy. They 

 have been seen in the heart of Germany, and a few have 

 even been met with in Scotland. The land is as the gar- 

 den of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate 

 wilderness, for they destroy all vegetable life with unfailing 

 certainty, and thus often cause famine, whilst the myriads 

 of corpses which they leave behind, poison the air and 

 not unfrequently produce disease and pestilence. Well did 

 the Jews of old know this fierce plague, and well can we 

 understand how the angel of the bottomless pit could ap- 

 pear to the inspired seer in the form of a fearfully armed 

 locust. 



On the easiest routes and in the most favorable ele- 

 ment for locomotion travel fishes, in incessant movement; 

 even swift birds, in their rapid and unwearied flight, must 

 yield the palm to them, the eagle to the shark, the swal- 

 low to the herring. Their form, also, is so particularly 



