INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 131 



a little singular how they could have supported themselves in the air so 

 long, as there was no land to the north-west for several thousand miles. 

 Two days afterwards, the weather being moderate, the brig sailed through 

 swarms of them floating dead upon the waters." 1 



With respect to the course which the locusts pursue, Hasselquist has 

 observed that they migrate in a direct meridian line from south to north, 

 passing from the deserts of Arabia, which is the great cradle of them, to 

 Palestine, Syria, Caramania, Natolia, Bithynia, Constantinople, Poland, 

 &c. they never turn either to the east or to the west. 2 But this must be 

 a mistaken notion ; for those which Major Moor saw at Poonah, of which 

 I have given an account above 3 , must have come due east. Mr. Jackson 

 also noticed their course north of the line to be towards the south 4 ; and 

 Sparrman tells us that those south of the line migrate in the same 

 direction. 5 



I fear that Hasselquist's question, Could they not by fright, or some 

 other method, be turned from their dreadful course, to steer for some 

 river, and by that means be obliged to destroy themselves? 6 must be 

 answered in the negative. All such experiments, it is to be apprehended, 

 would be about as effectual as sending an army, with all the apparatus of 

 war, to take the field against them, as this author says is done in Syria, 

 where the Bashaw of Tripoli once raised a force of 4000 soldiers to fight 

 the locusts, and very summarily ordered all to be hanged who, thinking it 

 beneath them to waste their valour upon such pigmy foes, refused to join 

 the party. 7 I am, &c. 



1 Ann. Nat. Hist. vi. 527. The authenticity of the above accounts is fully proved 

 by a fact mentioned by Mr. Darwin, that a large grasshopper (Acrydium) flew on 

 board the Beagle when she was to windward of the Cape de Verd Islands, and when 

 the nearest point of land, not directly opposed to the trade- wind, was Cape Blanco, 

 on the west of Africa, 370 miles distant. (Journal in Voyages of the Adventure and 

 Beagle, p. 186.) 



2 Voyage to the Levant, p. 446, 447. * See p. 127. 



4 Travels, 54. * Travels, i. 366. 



6 Travels 455. 7 Travels, 447. 



K 2 



