256 OUR INSECT FRIENDS AND FOES 



of Locusts, which arrived, borne on the wings of 

 an east wind, and covered all the land ; and after 

 devouring every green thing, they were swept 

 away by a western wind. Bred in the deserts of 

 Arabia and Tartary, the Locusts are carried into 

 Africa and Europe in innumerable swarms, 

 which look like advancing storm-clouds, darken- 

 ing the sky, and when they alight, covering the 

 ground and the branches of the trees for many 

 leagues. In a few hours every vestige of vege- 

 tation has been gnawed down and devoured, so 

 that the trees stand with bare and broken 

 branches, striped of their luxuriant foliage. Then, 

 as if by some recognized signal, the vast devasta- 

 ting army rises and departs, seeking further 

 what it may devour, leaving behind it pestilence, 

 famine, and despair. 



The Abbe Ussaris, who was an eye-witness of 

 the fearful invasion of Poland and Lithuania in 

 the year 1690 by Locusts, when these insects 

 appear to have arrived in three separate swarms 

 by different routes, wrote that " they were to be 

 found in certain places where they had died, 

 lying on one another in heaps of four feet in 

 height. Those which were alive, perched upon 

 the trees, bending their branches to the ground, 

 so great was their number. The people thought 

 that they had Hebrew letters on their wings. A 

 rabbi professed to be able to read on them 

 words which signified God's wrath. The rains 

 killed these insects: they infected the air; and 

 the cattle, which ate them in the grass, died 

 immediately." 



In 1845, an d again in 1866, the Locusts 



