Vol. XXV. No. 12.] 
POPULAE SCIENCE NEWS. 
177 
over the land, leaving behind myriads of their 
eggs, which laid glued together in small lumps 
everywliere over the fields, plains, and deserts. 
Tliis flying squadron soon disappeared, but in less 
than two months the eggs began to hatch, and, 
apparently, the whole surface of tlie earth awak- 
ened Into life. Each grain of sand seemed to have 
become a living, sentient thing. Presently this 
seething mass of nearly indistinguishable parti- 
cles developed until it could be seen that it was 
made up of the tiniest imaginable grasshoppers. 
The little creatures entered promptly upon their 
life task of destruction, all moving as vigorously 
in one direction as if swayed by a single will — a 
crawling, jumping host of living atoms. 
Dr. Thomson was upon horseback when he 
caught his first glimpse of an extraordinary and 
puzzling spectacle. He could hardly persuade 
himself that he saw aright, but surely the whole 
surf. ice of a hill near by was agitated — moving; 
more than this — a thin layer seemed to be peeling 
off" and rolling down its sides. It looked like 
quicksilver ; no, too thick for quicksilver — it was 
more like mortar. What could it be? His inter- 
est was greatly excited ; so was that of his horse ; 
but while he was eager to approach and examine, 
the horse was strongly of the opinion that it was 
well to leave the strange thing as far as possible 
behind them. Rebellion followed; but, fired by 
scientific zeal, the doctor left the animal only 
half conquered, dismounted, and came close. He 
found his mortar was a living mass of infant 
locusts — wingless, even too young to leap — that 
had started rolling down hill for some cause best 
known to themselves. Perhaps it was only from 
accident, but who can saj' what access of baby 
terror might have swept over them at the heavy 
tread of the approaching horse. 
Some years later Dr. Thomson was privileged 
to form a more intimate acquaintance with these 
small imps of destruction, this time grown to 
their full size, though wingless. He was living 
upon Mount Lebanon when the locusts were re- 
ported to be coming towards the mountain in 
force. The people put forth every eflTort to stay 
their progress, but without success ; and soon the 
wliole surface of the earth grew black with the 
on-moving of their steady ranks. They scaled 
the rocks; they clambered over walls, hedges, 
ditches; whatever came they surmounted, never 
turning aside for any obstacle — not even for the 
houses — not even for the palace of the Emir — they 
went straight up over everything and down on 
the otlier side. Dr. Thomson thought he might 
compass, perhaps, the saving of his garden. To 
this end he hired a large number of men and set 
them on guard night and day. They built fires; 
they drove the locusts off, beating them with 
bushes and branches of trees ; but, though manj' 
were killed, others so interminably followed in 
their wake that at length the men fairly suc- 
cumbed and gave up tlie battle. 
This army was four days only in possession of 
the land, but when they left it was as if the 
mountain had been swept by the besom of de- 
struction — as if a great fire had raged over it, 
consuming all vegetable life. The vines had been 
covered with young grapes, the trees laden with 
figs, mulberries, and olives; but they were now 
bai-er than ours in midwinter, for even their bark 
— bitter and hard as it was — had been stripped 
from them and devoured. The land, before the 
coming of the locusts, was gieen as an emerald; 
now even the gardens were but beds of sand. In 
the fields not an inch of pasture was spared, not a 
stalk of corn, not a blade of grass. The flecks 
and herds were left absolutely without food. 
Even this was not all. It was soon found that 
they had eaten up everything made of silk, wool, 
linen, or leather that they had come upon in their 
path. 
Mohammed endows the locust with speech and 
makes him say : " We are the army of the great 
God; we produce uinetj'-nine eggs; if the hun- 
dred were complete we should consume the whole 
earth and all that is in it." 
The Arabs declare that the locust has stolen a 
part from every bird and beast, taking its bodj' 
from the scorpion, tail from the dragon, legs from 
the stork, wings from the eagle, head from the 
horse, eye from the elephant, neck from the bull, 
and breast from the lion. Yet it is far from being 
an ugly creature to look upon. It Is about two 
and a half inches in length, of a pale brown color, 
the elytra being spotted with darker brown or 
black. The legs are brown with alternate bands 
of black and yellow ; the hind legs are very large 
and strong, and are pow^ful for leaping. The 
thorax is covered with fine down, and the wings 
• — which are often tinted with iridescent hues and 
folded like a fan — are large and shining. In ap- 
pearance the locust is not unlike the common 
grasshopper of this country. The principal dif- 
ferences lie in the comparative shortness of its 
antennae, its somewhat stouter body, and its pos- 
sessing only three foot-joints, while the grasshop- 
per can lay claim to four. 
Locusts are found in all except the coldest parts 
of the earth. Europe, .Vsia, Africa, and America 
can each boast them as her own ; but in both Eu- 
rope and America they are comparatively harm- 
less outside the tropical and sub-tropical regions 
of the continents. Even in these hotter States 
their ravages are inconsiderable compared with 
the terrible destruction they have wrought in 
Africa and some Asiatic countries, notably Arabia 
and its neighboring regions. 
As each blessing has its bane, so every bane 
should bring its good along ; and the good of the 
locust is that, while it destroys all else, it can in 
its own person furnish that which will sustain 
life in both beast and man. x\ll kinds of birds as 
well as quadrupeds feed upon it greedily. At 
first, doubtless, from necessity, when the locust 
had left him nothing else to eat, man, too, tried 
the little creature as a food, learned to relish his 
flavor, and has since continued to eat from choice. 
Some of the Arabs boil their locusts and then dry 
them in the sun ; others cure them by soaking in 
oil; and again others preserve them in brine, per- 
haps drying them afterwards. They are also 
roasted, or fried in butter, and eaten with honey. 
Besides this, they are often dried and ground, and 
the flour-like substance resulting is made into 
bread. They are even offered for sale in the 
markets of Arabia, Syria, and Egypt. The Afri- 
can bushmen cook them by making great fires. 
The locusts fly into the flame, their wings are 
burned, they fall, and are roasted ; then the bush- 
man draws them forth, eats, and is happy. Some 
Europeans do not fancy their nut-like flavor, es- 
pecially at first, while others find them pal.atable. 
Lady Anne Blunt tells of riding through a part 
of Northern Araltia where a swarm of locusts had 
lately passed, leaving their dead and stragglers 
behind them. The camels ate these as a relishing 
morsel with their provender, and her greyhounds 
picked them up all day, eating a great many of 
them. She says they were regularly used in 
camp as a part of the day's ration, and thought a 
very fair substitute for vegetables, their flavor 
being somewhat like that of wheat still in the 
milk. After trying the many difterent modes of 
cooking, all the Europeans agreed that they pre- 
ferred them simply boiled. When cooked they 
took the creatures daintily by the wings, pulled 
off their long legs, dipped them in salt, and "ate 
them with much relish." Lady Anne, when she 
first tasted them, thought them "fairly good," 
but soon came to consider them "a most excel- 
lent article of diet." During her visit to Arabia 
many of the tribes were wholly dependent upon 
locusts and camel's milk for their food. 
Dr. Livingstone considered locusts very good 
eating, and they are highly prized by the natives 
of South Africa as affording a nourishing and 
wholesome food for man, birds, and beasts. Their 
domestic animals — horses, cows, and sheep — fat- 
ten upon them, while they are devoured in great 
numbers by antelopes, hyenas, and jackals, and 
even elephants and lions do not disdain to eat 
them. 
*•* ■ 
[Original In PopiTLAB SCIENCE News.] 
MODIFICATIOX OF OUR CLIMATE. 
BY JOSEPH WALLACE. 
Every now and then some weather sage pre- 
dicts extremely cold winters, and another vent- 
ures to say that the sun is gradually losing heat 
and in time Arctic cold will prevail over the 
globe. Whatever may have been the changes 
during the vast cycles of time prior to the advent 
of man, or whatever may be the changes in the 
time to come, one thing is quite certain : that our 
climate has been much modified within the past 
two or three thousand years. 
"'ITiere have been fifteen climatic changes since 
the beginning of the glacial age, each change last- 
ing 10,500 years, and each change reversing the 
season in the two hemispheres, the pole which 
had enjoyed continuous summer being doomed to 
undergo perpetual winter for 10,.500 years, and 
then passing to its former state for an equal term. 
The physical changes upon the earth's surface 
during the pasti80,000 years modified the changes 
of climate even in the Arctic regions, so that the 
intense cold of the former epochs was mucli modi- 
fied during the latter epochs." 
Reckoning these climatic changes in their order, 
we had entered the epoch of a more genial tem- 
perature about fifteen hundred years ago; and if 
no disturbing change takes place during the pres- 
ent epoch, we may reasonably expect a gradual 
modification of our winters for nine thousand 
years to come. The changes to intense cold from 
perpetual summer during the greater part of the 
glacial period are supposed to have been caused 
by the high temperature of the north pole as com- 
pared to that of the south pole, owing to the dis- 
tribution of laud around the two, the south having 
almost none. Dr. Croll thinks it was caused by 
the varying inclination of the earth's axis, which 
produced the relative position of the two poles 
towards the sun to be periodically reversed at dis- 
tant periods. Dr. James Geikie agrees with Croll 
on the reverse of seasons every 10,500 years dur- 
ing certain periods of high elipticity of the earth's 
orbit. 
But it may be asked, "How could the fauna 
and flora propagate themselves under such condi- 
tions?" The flora itself at the Quaternary Age 
was of extreme vigor. We know this from the 
little wliich is left us, but more especially from 
the presence of a large number of herbivorous 
animals — stags, horses, elephants, rhinoceros, 
etc.— which animated the plains and valleys of 
Europe and America at that time. Evidently 
they could not have lived and propagated them- 
selves without abundant vegetation for nourish- 
ment and development. 
That which has deceived the adherents of the 
