THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 151 
By what route the locusts of Africa have reached the 
continent of Europe seems involved in some mystery ; 
whether by the direct passage across the Mediterranean Sea, 
or the more circuitous course by the Holy Land, seems 
doubtful; but it is certain that locusts have visited Europe 
in foree. In the year 591 a swarm visited Italy, pursuing 
their destructive career, and laying waste all before them 
until they reached the sea, in which they perished. The 
pestilence, arising from the stench, carried off men and 
beasts to the number of more than a million. 
It were obviously foreign to my purpose to attempt the 
differentiation of the locusts of the Old Continent and the 
New; doubtless it would be easy to exhibit scientific charac- 
ters, but Dr. Cyrus Thomas has lately performed the task in 
an exhaustive and masterly manner that leaves nothing to be 
desired. His work on the ‘Acridide of North America’ is 
one of the most complete monographs ever published. 
There is a question of nomenclature about which I would 
raise my feeble voice,—the restriction of the words locust and 
grasshopper. In England we use the words interchangably, 
and attach no particular meaning to either. But in America 
the line seems drawn with great strictness :— Everyone in 
this country,” says Mr. Bethune, “is perfectly familiar with 
what is commonly called a ‘ grasshopper ;’ but how very few 
are aware that what they term a grasshopper, and see too 
often to think much about, is the same kind of insect as the 
much-dreaded, famine-producing locust, that constituted one 
of the plagues of Egypt, and that is an object of so much 
terror wherever it prevails. A true locust it nevertheless is; 
but it were well, for many reasons, that our people became 
accustomed to call it by its right name. Our common species 
in this province, while it does not possess the power of 
suddenly appearing in vast numbers and emigrating from 
place to place, occasionally becomes greatly multiplied, and 
proves very destructive. The western locust or grasshopper, 
however, differing but very slightly from our species, is, as 
we shall presently show, quite as formidable a destroyer as 
its oriental congener. While the true American locusts are 
commonly called grasshoppers, and the true grasshoppers are 
termed crickets, katydids, &c., another element of confusion 
is mingled with our insect nomenclature, by the common 
