117 



the tide, and ascertained the species to be the true 

 migratory locust. 



The gryllus cristatus is the largest of the locust tribe, 

 and at least five times the size of the gryllus migra- 

 torius. It is sold in the markets of the Levant as an 

 article of food, and is likely to have been that on 

 which the Baptist subsisted in the wilderness of Judea: 

 it was permitted in the Mosaic ritual, and we think it 

 absurd to suppose it to have been the hymenea cour- 

 baril. 



The Rev. W. T. Bree * informs us that the bursting 

 of alder buds is contemporaneous with the period 

 when eels leave their brumal retreats ; and the return 

 of snipes from their migration simultaneous with the 

 flowering of certain wild plants, such as the draba 

 verna and others. It has been ingeniously suggested 

 by Mr. Lees that the flowering of a plant might be the 

 harbinger of the advent of some bird, and the opening 

 blossom of a plant be announced by the appearance of 

 an insect. These contemporaneous events are very 

 interesting, and if accurately recorded may eventually 

 conduce to the solution of a problem curious in it- 

 self, and interesting to the naturalist and lover of 

 nature's loveliness. The question, however, will still 

 recur in full force, who or what carried the interesting 

 intelligence to the swallow or the stork, when far away 

 from Britain's isle and Europe ? The sympathetic chord, 

 whatever it be, vibrates from pole to pole, and encircles 

 the globe. The migration of birds seems regulated by 

 a changed electric state of the earth or air. This is 

 Heaven's electro-magnetic telegraph, which announces 

 the intelligence to a distant clime, and none so universal 

 or so swift. It is this which tells our absentee feathered 

 race that the spring has indeed returned, and the 

 * Mag. Nat. Hist. No. II. p. 17. 



