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LETTEE VII. 



INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 

 INDIRECT INJURIES continued. 



To look at a locust in a cabinet of insects, you would not, at first sight, 

 deem it capable of being the source of so much evil to mankind as stands 

 on record against it. " This is but a small creature," you would say, 

 "and the mischief which it causes cannot be far beyond the proportion of 

 its bulk. The locusts so celebrated in history must surely be of the Indian 

 kind mentioned by Pliny, which were three feet in length, with legs so 

 strong that the women used them as saws. I see, indeed, some resem- 

 blance to the horse's head, but where are the eyes of the elephant, the 

 neck of the bull, the horns of the stag, the chest of the lion, the belly of 

 the scorpion, the wings of the eagle, the thighs of the camel, the legs of the 

 ostrich, and the tail of the serpent, all of which the Arabians mention as 

 attributes of this widely-dreaded insect destroyer 1 ; but of which in the 

 insect before me I discern little or no likeness ? " Yet, although this ani- 

 mal be not very tremendous for its size, not very terrific in its appearance, 

 it is the very same whose ravages have been the theme of naturalists and 

 historians in all ages, and upon a close examination you will find it to be 

 peculiarly fitted and furnished for the execution of its office. It is armed 

 with two pairs of very strong jaws, the upper terminating in short and the 

 lower in long teeth, by which it can both lacerate and grind its food its 

 stomach is of extraordinary capacity and powers its hind legs enable it 

 to leap to a considerable distance, and its ample vans are calculated to 

 catch the wind as sails, and so to carry it sometimes over the sea ; and 

 although a single individual can effect but little evil, yet when the entire 

 surface of a country is covered by them, and everyone makes bare the spot 

 on which it stands, the mischief produced may be as infinite as their num- 

 bers. So well do the Arabians know their power, that they make a locust 

 say to Mahomet, "We are the army of the great God; we produce 

 ninety-nine eggs ; if the hundred were completed, we should consume the 

 whole earth and all that is in it." 2 



Since it is possible you may not have paid particular attention to the 

 accounts given by various authors, both ancient and modern, of the almost 

 incredible injury done to the human race by these creatures, I shall now 

 lay before you some of the most striking particulars of their devastations 

 that I have been able to collect. 



The earliest plague of this kind which has been recorded, appears also 

 to have been the most direful in its immediate effects that ever was inflicted 

 upon any nation. I am speaking, as you may well suppose, of the locusts 



Bochart, Hierozoic. P. ii. 1. iv. c. 5. 475. 2 Ibid., uU supr. c. G. 485. 



