214 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



Nc-sts Attend the flight ot'locusts. 



mous size, appear on examination to consist of a 

 number of cells, each of which forms a separate 

 nest, with a tube that leads into it through the 

 side; so that what seemed but one great nest, i 

 found to consist of a little society of perhaps ten 

 or twenty. One roof of interwoven twigs covers 

 the whole, like that made over the nest of the 

 magpie of our country. 



Mr. Barrow informs us, in his Travels, that he 

 saw a vast number of these hirds in the district 

 of Sneuwberg, about an hundred and fifty leagues 

 north-east of the Cape. The gryllivori had not 

 visited that colony for thirteen years before ; that 

 is to say, since the last time the locusts had in- 

 fested it. " They had," he says, " taken up a 

 temporary abode here; in a place which they 

 were not likely, in a short space of time, to be 

 tinder the necessity of quitting for want of food. 

 Of the innumerable multitudes of the incorrtplete 

 insect, or larva of the locusts, that at this time 

 infected this part of Africa, no adequate idea 

 could possibly be formed ; in an area of nearly 

 two thousand square miles, the whole surface of 

 the earth might be literally said to be covered 

 with them. The gryllivori attended closely the 

 last flight of locusts, and departed with them ; 

 since which time till the year 1797, (in which 

 our author visited Africa,) not one of them was 

 to be found in the country." 



