84 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



and pedestrian, which will recall to the recollection of a 

 biblical reader some passages from Joel and the Apoca- 

 lypse." Niebuhr says that he heard from a Bedouin, near 

 Basrah, a particular comparison of the locusts to other 

 animals ; but as this passage of Scripture * did not occur 

 to him at the time, he thought it a mere fancy of the 

 Arabs, till he heard it repeated at Bagdad. He com- 

 pared the head of the locust to that of a horse, the 

 breast to that of a lion, the feet to those of a camel, the 

 belly to that of a serpent, and the tail to that of a 

 scorpion. 



If the reader will compare these ^remarks with the 

 verses in the Bible, he will be forcibly struck with their 

 family likeness ; and then if he turn to the passage re- 

 ferred to in the Apocalypse, there he will find that the 

 invading Arab is referred to, he whose progenitor's hands 

 were to be against every man, and every man's hands 

 against him. The star falling from heaven may mean the 

 founder of Mohammedanism ; and the habits and ravages of 

 the locust are descriptive in a very remarkable manner of 

 those of the Arabs, of which Mahomet was the chief. As 

 " the sun and the air were darkened " by the former, so 

 was the world filled with the darkness and error of the 

 latter. The people of Arabia are compared to " locusts " 

 or " grasshoppers for multitude," t for in the original the 

 word for both is the same. If the reader, like the 

 author, is at all interested in these references to the dear 

 old Bible, let him compare these three descriptions of the 

 habits of the locust with what the learned Bishop Newton 

 so carefully and fully explains as characteristic of the 

 Arabian followers of Mahomet, and he will find that the 

 structure of the insect and its terrible rapacity are very 

 remarkably characteristic of the race of Ishmael to this 

 * Bev. ix. 7- t See Judg. vii. 12. 



