LOCUSTS AND GRASSHOPPERS (ACRIDIID^E}. 109 



Migration of Locusts. 



Insignificant individually, but mighty collectively, the 

 migratory locusts fall upon a country liable to their 

 visitations like a blight, for they appear suddenly on 

 a spot in huge swarms, which, in the space of a few 

 hours, clear off all the vegetation that can be eaten, 

 leaving brown and bare that which all was green and 

 flourishing. It is difficult for those who have not 

 witnessed a serious invasion to fully conceive, or 

 appreciate it. So great the proportions of the scourge, 

 so vast their multitudes, their flight may be likened to 

 a vast body of fleecy clouds, or, still more correctly, to 

 an immense snowstorm, often extending from near the 

 ground to a height that baffles the keenest eye to 

 distinguish the insects in the upper stratum. It is a 

 vast mass of animated specks glittering against the sun. 

 On the horizon, they often appear as a heavy black 

 cloud. So densely packed the brood, they occasionally 

 even darken the air, intercepting the sun's rays for 

 hours, and casting a checkered shade over the earth. 

 Carruthers, in Nature, estimates a great flight of locusts 

 that passed over the s.s. Golconda, when off the Great 

 Hanish Islands in the Red Sea, in November 1889, at 

 over two thousand square miles in extent ; the number 

 of insects he calculates to have been 24,420 billions ; 



