BOOK XI. XXXV. 106-XXXV1. 109 



which meet them by flying in the opposite direction, 

 to their destruction. In Syria as well people are 

 commandeered by military order to kill them. In 

 so niany parts of the world is this plague abroad; 

 but with the Parthians even the locust is an 

 acceptable article of diet. 



The locust's voice appears to come from the back Physioiogy 

 of the head : it is believed that in that place at the loctJt. 

 juncture of the shoulder-blades they have a sort of 

 teeth, and that they produce a grating noise by 

 rubbing them together, chiefly about the two 

 equinoxes, as grasshoppers do about midsummer. 

 Locusts couple in the same manner as all insects 

 that pair, the female carrying the male with the end 

 of her tail bent back to him, and with slow separation. 

 In all this class the males are smaller than the 

 females. 



XXXVI. Most of the insects give birth to a Theam. 

 maggot ; ants for example produce in spring one that 

 resembles an eg^, these too sharing '^ their labour 

 as do bees, but bees make the food stuffs, whereas 

 ants collect theirs. And if anybody compared the 

 loads that ants carry with the size of their bodies, 

 he would confess that no creatures have 

 proportionally greater strength ; they carry them 

 held in their mouths, but they move larger loads 

 with their hind feet, turning their backs to them 

 and heaving against them with their shoulders. 

 Ants also have a system of government, and possess 

 memory and diUgence. They nibble their seeds 

 before they store them away, so that they may not 

 sprout up again out of the earth and germinate ; 

 they divide the larger seeds so as to get them in; 

 when they have been wetted by rain they bring them 



499 



