100 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



individual can effect but comparatively little injury, yet 

 when the entire surface of a country is covered with myr- 

 iads of them, and each one makes bare the spot on which it 

 stands, the evil produced by them must be as immense as 

 their numbers. So well do the Arabians know and feel 

 their power, that one of their Poets represents a Grasshop- 

 per saying to Mohammed, " We are the army of the great 

 God! we have power to consume the whole world and all 

 that is in it ! " 



Many ancient and modern authors have given accounts 

 of the almost incredible injuries done to the human race by 

 these creatures ; but no one, I believe, has ever yet related 

 that it has actually been necessary to send an army of 

 30,000 soldiers against them in order to prevent their rav- 

 ages a fact which happened under my own observation, 

 and which I shall soon relate. 



The earliest records we have concerning the appearance 

 of Grasshoppers on the earth is found in the Bible, where 

 they are mentioned as one of the Plagues of Egypt. That 

 country was then so covered with them that the surface of 

 the ground could not be seen, and all the trees and herbs 

 were destroyed by them. We find this account in the Sec- 

 ond Book of Moses, chapter 10th. "And the Grasshop- 

 pers went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all 

 the coasts of Egypt : very grievous were they. . . . For they 

 covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was 

 darkened ; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all 

 the fruit of the trees which the hail had left : and there re- 

 mained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of 

 the field, through all the land of Egypt." 



It will be noticed that I have substituted the word 

 "Grasshoppers" for the word "Locusts," as it occurs in 

 our English version of the Bible ; but I have before shown 

 that the latter word is incorrect, and that the animal desig- 

 nated in Scripture was not similar to our locust or cicada, 



