312 BERTHA'S VISIT ro HER 



in the morning was covered with the locusts. 

 This strong easterly wind, which enabled them to 

 cross the Red Sea, was plainly preternatural ; 

 and we are told distinctly that * before them 

 there were no such locusts as they, neither after 

 them shall be such.' 



<c There are in Scripture ten names for locusts. 

 The species mentioned here is called Arbah, 

 which imports multiplicity ; a very just name, 

 indeed : for their prodigious numbers almost defy 

 calculation ; and the famous Dutch naturalist 

 Leuwenhoek asserts, that every female lays up- 

 wards of eighty eggs. When a cloud of these 

 insects alights upon the ground, the devastation 

 they create is dreadful. Adanson, in his voyage 

 to the western coast of Africa, says, that they 

 devoured to the very root and bark ; and that 

 there was something corrosive in their bite, which 

 prevented the trees from recovering their power 

 of vegetation for some time. They even at- 

 tacked the dry reeds with which the huts were 

 thatched. Another traveller tells us that in 

 Cyprus, as he went from Larnica to a garden 

 at about four miles' distance, the locusts lay 

 above a foot deep, on several parts of the high 

 roads, and millions were destroyed by the wheels 

 of the carriage. Dr. Shaw says, that he saw 

 them in such multitudes in Barbary, in the 

 middle of April, that in the heat of the day, 

 when they formed themselves into large bodies, 



