ENTOMOLOGICAL. 79 



domestic friend, the house cricket, how many might be 

 devoted to his foreign relation, the true locust that 

 tropical pest, which is worse than an invading army in 

 the devastation it produces, and which, though, thank: 

 God, it is very rarely seen in England, and then only an 

 accidental importation is sometimes seen in the suburbs 

 of Paris, but is frightfully destructive in some parts of 

 Turkey, also in Asia and Africa. 



Here is one example. The present Chancellor of the 

 Exchequer, Mr. Goschen, when he returned from Con- 

 stantinople in 1881, from his work in the city of the 

 Sultan, whose finance, like our own, he had been endea- 

 vouring to improve, said, at a public meeting in London, 

 in justification of his sympathy for the Turks, " I am not 

 placing this picture before you simply to harrow your 

 feelings ; but I did wish to give you a picture of some 

 of the troubles which were weighing upon the Turkish 

 Empire some of the disasters which seemed to add to 

 the complications that were pressing on the Government 

 of Turkey. I am sorry to say that 1 have not exhausted 

 the list. A plague of locusts came on the western shores 

 of Asia Minor and laid low the crops ; only this morning 

 I received a letter from a government officer telling me 

 that the plague had reappeared, devastating the crops 

 and corn that 1700 tons of young locusts had to be 

 buried in his district alone." You may examine the 

 undigested contents of a locust's stomach, if you please, 

 from a specimen I have recently had sent me. You will 

 find its large capacity completely filled with parts of the 

 bodies of insects and little bits of leaves. It was e\ idently 

 a first-rate gourmand, wasn't it? 



Here is a description of the ravages these instruments 

 of desolation will make, which is confirmed over and over 

 again by all Eastern travellers : " 'Wherever they alight 



