35O THE NATURAL HISTORY 



corn having been completely devoured in the course 

 of a few hours by these insects, we find it difficult to 

 resist an impression that the statement must be an 

 exaggeration ; but if the armies of these devastators 

 on wing could on one single occasion darken the air 

 over an extent of surface equal to the whole length of 

 England and Scotland together, and when, at length, 

 they were blown or fell exhausted into the sea, and 

 those that escaped being drowned were washed back 

 again on the shore, their dead bodies formed a bank 

 more than a yard high and fifty miles long, the stench 

 from which could be perceived at a distance of a 

 hundred and fifty miles (all which facts Kirby and 

 Spence tell us are recorded on unimpeachable autho- 

 rity), the destruction of a few acres of verdure may be 

 deemed a comparatively insignificant feature in their 

 history. 



The music of the locust band may be said to be 

 of a more refined character than that of the crickets 

 and grasshoppers ; it consists of a more regular and 

 rapid succession of notes and intervals of equal dura- 

 tion, and is more subdued and pleasing ; we allude, of 

 course, to that of the smaller species we have so often 

 listened to here, and watched during their rehearsals 

 on a sunny day in autumn. In the production of these 

 notes the wing-covers are again brought into play, not, 

 however, by friction against each other, but by the 

 rapid action of the hind legs alternately up and down 

 across them, the inner edges of the femora being 

 roughened for the purpose of producing by friction a 

 vibration in the prominent nervures of the wing-covers 

 with which they are brought in contact. A resound- 

 ing cavity on each side of the abdomen, immediately 

 underneath the wing-covers, partially closed by a 

 drum-head and curiously fitted internally with a deli- 

 cate membrane stretched across it, in a plane parallel 

 to the drum-head, greatly increases the effect of this 

 vibration. May not the inventor of the violin have 



