EXORCISING THE INVADERS. 151 



levy was formerly employed for the same purpose. In the 

 middle ages the Church was called upon to interfere, and 

 priests exorcised them as if they were so many evil spirits. 

 Alvarez relates, with much simplicity, the manner in which 

 he employed his exorcisms against an immense locust- 

 flight which he encountered in Ethiopia. He caused tlie 

 Portuguese in his train, and the natives, to assemble in 

 procession, chanting certain psalms. Thus they proceeded 

 into a district where corn was growing ; and there they 

 caught a good number of locusts, to which Alvarez de- 

 livered a solemn adjuration, "svritten and composed on the 

 preceding evening, summoning, admonishing, and excom- 

 municating them. Next he charged them in three hours' 

 time to depart into the sea, or else to go to the land of the 

 Moors, and no longer afflict a Christian region. And on 

 their supposed refusal, he adjured and invoked all the 

 birds of the air, animals, and tempests, to dissipate, de- 

 stroy, and devour them ; and for this admonition he 

 directed a quantity of the locusts to be seized, and pro- 

 nouncing his adjuration in their presence, that they might 

 not pretend ignorance of it, he dismissed them to tell their 

 congeners ! It is unfortunate that Alvarez has not re- 

 corded the result of his curious experiment. 



Of the nature of the havoc committed by the locusts we 

 can give but one example. In 1866 Algeria was invaded 

 by them. The inroad lasted for five months — from March 

 to July — each day bringing up new swarms of depredators ; 

 and Henry Berthoud, then travelling in Algeria, saw a 

 column of them whose passage began before daylight and 

 had scarcely terminated at four o'clock in tlie afternoon. 



