302 fHE INSECT WORLD. 



clouds, even hiding the sun. As far and as wide as the eye can reach 

 the sky is black, and the soil is inundated with them. The noise of 

 these millions of wings may be compared to the sound of a cataract. 

 When this fearful army alights upon the ground, the branches of the 

 trees break, and in a few hours, and over an extent of many leagues, 

 all vegetation has disappeared, the wheat is gnawed to its very roots, 

 the trees are stripped of their leaves. Everything has been destroyed, 

 gnawed down, and devoured. When nothing more is left, the terrible 

 host rises, as if in obedience to some given signal, and takes its 

 departure, leaving behind it despair and famine. It goes to look for 

 fresh food — seeking whom, or rather in this case, what it may 

 devour! (Plate VIII.) 



During the year succeeding that in which a country has been 

 devastated by showers of locusts, damage from these insects is the 

 less to be feared ; for it happens often that after having ravaged 

 everything, they die of hunger before the laying season begins. But 

 their death becomes the cause of a greater evil. Their innumerable 

 carcases, lying in heaps and heated by the sun, are not long in 

 entering into a state of putrefaction ; epidemic disease, caused by the 

 poisonous gases emanating from them, soon breaks out, and deci- 

 mates the populations. These locusts are bred in the deserts of 

 Arabia and Tartary, and the east winds carry them into Africa and 

 Europe. Ships in the eastern parts of the Mediterranean are 

 sometimes covered with them at a great distance from the land. 



It is related in the Bible, in the tenth chapter of Exodus, that 

 Jehovah commanded Moses to stretch forth his hand to make locusts 

 (Arbeth) come over the wliole land of Egypt as the eighth plague, 

 destined to intimidate Pharaoh, who had rebelled against Him. 

 These insects arrived, brought by an east wind, and covered the 

 surface of the country to such a degree that the air was darkened by 

 them.* 



They ate up all the herbs of the field and all the fruit of the trees 

 which the hail (the seventh plague) had left. A west wind swept 



* "And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord 

 brought an east wind upon the land all tliat day, and all that night ; and when it 

 was morning, the east wind brought the locusts. And the locusts went up over all 

 the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt : very grievous were they ; 

 before them there were no such locusts as they, neither afrer them shall be such. 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 remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, 

 through all the land of Egypt." — ExOD. x. 13 — 15. 



