LOCUSTID.E— LOCUSTS. 109 



dens, and causing a noise like the rushing of a torrent. 

 Tliey were ahuost an hour in passing a given point.^ 



In another place, this traveler states that, in one con- 

 siderable tract near the confines of the Brodera district, lie 

 witnessed a mournful scene, occasioned by a scourge of Lo- 

 custs. They had, some time before he came, alighted in 

 that part of the country, and left behind them, he says, 

 "an awful contrast to the general beauty of that earthly 

 paradise." The sad description of Ilosea, he adds, was 

 literally realized : " That which the palmer-worm hath left, 

 hath the caterpillar eaten. They have laid waste the vine, 

 and barked the fig-tree ; they have made it clean bare, and 

 the branches thereof are made white : the pomegranate- 

 tree, the palm-tree also, and the apple-tree, even all the 

 trees of the field are withered. Howl, ye husbandmen I 

 for the wheat and for the barley ; because the harvest of the 

 field is perished. How do the beasts groan ! The herds 

 of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture ; yea, 

 the flocks of sheep are made desolate !'" 



On the 16th of May, 1800, Buchanan met with in Mysore 

 a flight of Locusts which extended in length about three 

 miles. He compares the noise they made to the sound of 

 a cataract.^ This swarm was very destructive to the young 

 crops of jola.* 



In 1811, at Smyrna, at right angles to a flight of Locusts, 

 a man rode forty miles before he got rid of the moving 

 column. This immense flight continued for three days and 

 nights, apparently without intermission. It was computed 

 that the lowest number of Locusts in this swarm must have 

 exceeded 168,608,563,200,200! Captain Beaufort determ- 

 ined that the Locusts of this flight, which he himself saw, 

 if framed into a heap, would have exceeded in magnitude 

 more than a thousand and thirty times the largest pyramid 

 of Egypt ; or if put on the ground close together, in a band 

 of a mile and an eighth in width, would have encircled the 

 globe ! This immense swarm caused such a famine in the 

 district of Marwar, that the natives fled for subsistence in a 

 living torrent into Guzerat and Bombay ; and out of every 



1 Orient. Mem., ii. 273. 



2 Ibid , iii. 338. 



3 Finkerton's Col. of Voy. and Trav., viii. 595. 

 * Ibid., viii. 613. 



