30 <f THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOB THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. " 



"On the 13th of May last," wrote a lady contributor to the Contemporary 

 Review for June, 1891: "I was traveling with my husband through Eistern 

 Algeria. At six o'clock on a lovely summer's morning and there, before us in the 

 transparent air, looking like a summer snow storm, we saw approaching a dancing 

 cloud of winged particles. It was the advance guard of the dreaded locust army 

 . . . The whole of this wide expanse including the three departments of Oran , 

 Algiers and Constantine, which composes the colony stretching from Morocco on 

 the west to Tunisia on the east, the city of Algiers standing about halfway between 

 the two boundaries, and the whole coast line being about a thousand kilometres in 

 length is threatened with ruin, ruin compared to which the ravages of the 

 phylloxera are mild. Tne last news that we have from the Western Province wa& 

 that around Flemeen, on the frontier, flights of locusts were alighting uninter- 

 mittently, and that a caravan just arrived there from Morocco, had travelled for 

 thirty days in the midst of locusts, the country being entirely devastated. 1 ' 



SCRIPTURE WARNINGS. 



Surely the warnings given through the prophets Moses and Joel were 

 not meaningless dreams ? Warnings of results that were sure to fallow 

 in the wake of wilful disobedience to nature's teachings results foreseen 

 by Him whose servants said prophets were and who caused them to 

 write as follows: "Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, 

 and shalt gather little in; for the locust shall consume it. Thou shalt 

 plant vineyards and dress them, but thou shalt neither drink of the wine, 

 nor gather the grapes, for the worms shall eat them. Thou shalt have 

 olive trees throughout all thy borders, but thou shalt not annoint thyself 

 with the oil, for thine olive shall cast its fruit. All thy trees and the fruit 

 of thy ground shall the locubts possess." DEUT. 28. And after centuries 

 of forest destruction Jo^l wrote: " Hear this ye old men, and give ear all 

 ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or in the days of 

 your fathers? Tell ye your children of it, and let their children tell their 

 children, and their children another generation. That which the canker 

 worm hath left hath the locusts eaten; and that which the locusts hath left 

 hath the canker worm eaten; and that which the canker worm hath left 

 hath the caterpillar eaten, for a nation (of insect plagues) is come upon 

 our land strong and without number; his (locusts) teeth are the teeth of 

 the lion, and he hath the jaw-teeth of a great lion. He hath laid my vine 

 waste, and barked my fig tree, he hath made it clean bare, the branches 

 thereof are made white. ... Be ashamed all ye husbandmen, howl, O ye 

 vine dressers, for the wheat and for the barley , for the harvest of the field is 

 perished, the vine is withered and the fig tree languisheth; the pome- 

 granite tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of 

 the field are withered; for joy (the Father's guiding love) is withered 

 away from the sons of men. The seeds rot under their clods, the grasses 

 lay desolate, the barns are broken down, for the corn is withered. How 

 the beasts do groan ! the herds of cattle are perplexed because they 

 have no pasture !" 



NKWMAN'S CAUJSTA. 



" The plague of locusts, one of the most awful visitations to which the 

 countries included in the Roman Empire were exposed, extended from the 

 Atlantic to Ethiopia, from Arabia to India, and from the Nile and Ked Sea 

 to Greece and the north of Asia Minor. Instances are recorded in historv 

 of clouds of the devastating insects crossing the Black Sea to Poland, and 

 the Mediterranean to Lombardy. It is as numerous in its species as it is 

 wide in its range of territory. Brood follows brood, with a sort of family 



