304 THE INSECT WORLD. 



when a host of these insects beat violently against his army as it 

 was passing through a defile, so that men and horses were blinded 

 by this living hail, falling from a cloud which hid the sun. The 

 arrival of the locusts had been announced by a whistling sound 

 like that which precedes a tempest ; and the noise of their flight 

 quite overpowered the noise made by the Black Sea. All the 

 country round about was soon laid waste on their route. During 

 the same year a great part of Europe was invaded by these pests, 

 the newspapers of the day being full of accounts relating to this 

 public calamity. In 1753 Portugal was attacked by them. This 

 was the year of the earthquake of Lisbon, arid all sorts of 

 plagues seemed at this time to rage furiously in that unfortunate 

 country. 



In 1780, in Transylvania, their ravages assumed such gigantic 

 proportions that it was found necessary to call in the assistance of 

 the army. Regiments of soldiers gathered them together and 

 enclosed them in sacks. Fifteen hundred persons were employed 

 in crushing, burying, and burning them ; but, in spite of all this, 

 their number did not seem to diminish ; but a cold wind, which 

 fortunately sprang up, caused them to disappear. In the fol- 

 lowing spring the plague broke out again, and every one turned 

 out to fight against it. The locusts were swept with great 

 brooms into ditches, in which they were then burnt ; not, 

 however, before they had ruined the whole country. Locusts 

 showed themselves at the same time in the empire of Morocco, 

 where they caused a fearful famine. The poor were to be seen 

 wandering on all sides digging up the roots of vegetables, and 

 eagerly devouring camels' dung, in hopes of finding in it a few 

 undigested grains of barley. 



Barrow and Levaillant, in their travels through Central Africa, 

 speak of similar calamities having happened many times between 

 1784 and 1797. They add that the surface of the rivers was then 

 hidden by the bodies of the locusts, which covered the whole 

 country. 



According to Jackson, in 1739 they covered the whole sur- 

 face of the ground from Tangiers to Mogador. All the region 

 near to the Sahara was ravaged, whilst on the other side of the 

 river El Klos there was not one of these insects. When the wind 



