MIGRATORIOUS LOCUST. 387 



colour still continued. Towards the end of June, they cast off their 

 outward covering, and then it plainly appeared that they had wings, 

 Very like the wings of bees, but as yet unripe, and unexpauded ; 

 and then their body was very tender, and of a yellowish green; 

 then, in order to render themselves fit for flying, they gradually un- 

 folded their wings with their hinder feet, as flies do ; and as soon as 

 any of them found themselves able to use their wings, they soared 

 up, and by flying round the others, enticed them to join them ; and 

 thus their numbers encreased daily; they took circular flights of 

 twenty or thirty yards square, until they were joined by the rest ; 

 and after miserably laying waste their native fields, they proceeded 

 elsewhere in large troops. Wheresoever those troops happened to 

 pitch, they spared no sort of vegetable : they eat up the young corn 

 and the very grass ; but nothing was more dismal than to behold 

 the lands in which they were hatched ; for they so greedily devoured 

 every green thing thereon, before they could fly, that they left the 

 ground quite bare. 



" There is nothing to be feared in those places to which this 

 plague did not reach before the autumn ; for the locusts have not 

 strength to fly to any considerable distance but in the months of 

 July, August, and the beginning of September; and even then, in 

 changing their places of residence, they seem to tend to warmer 

 climates. 



Different methods are to be employed, according to the age and 

 state of these insects ; for some will be effectual as soon as they are 

 hatched ; others when they begin to crawl ; and others in fine when 

 they begin to fly ; and experience has taught us here in Transyl- 

 vania, that it would have been of great service to have diligently 

 sought out the places where the females lodged ; for nothing was 

 more easy than carefully to visit those places in March and April, 

 and to destroy their eggs, or little worms with sticks or briars; or if 

 they were not to be beat out of the bushes, dung-hilis, or heaps of 

 straw, to set fire to them ; and this method would have been very 

 easy, convenient, and successful, as it has been in other places; but 

 in the summer, when they have marched out of their spring quar- 

 ters, and have invaded the corn-fields, &c. it is almost impossible to 

 extirpate them without thoroughly threshing the whole piece of 

 land that harbours them with sticks or flails ; and thus crushing the 

 locust with the produce of the land. Finally, when the corn i? 



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