INSECT INVADERS. 47 



Locusts should make excellent eating, for, under ordinary 

 circumstances, they are clean feeders. However, I must 

 admit that I have never had the courage to try. 



The life-history of the locust is interesting. As may be 

 surmised the female is prolific. Mirabile dictu, the Arabians 

 were not far wrong when they made a locust say to Moham- 

 med, " We produce ninety-nine eggs. If the hundred were 

 completed, we should consume the whole earth and all that 

 is in it." A locust lays from fifty to a hundred eggs. The 

 female is larger than the male, and possesses at the hind 

 end of her body four hook-like valves, by the repeated open- 

 ing and closing of which she bores a hole in the ground. 

 This forms a receptacle for her eggs. Firm sandy soil is a 

 sine qua non for the locust's nest. The female first deposits 

 some frothy mucous matter in the hole. In this she lays an 

 egg. Then more frothy substance is deposited, then another 

 egg, until the nest is full. The chief use of the mucous 

 matter is to protect the eggs from the damp, which is very 

 fatal to them. It will be noticed that the eggs which are 

 first laid are at the bottom of the nest ; these hatch out first, 

 and to allow their young to escape a kind of irregular chan- 

 nel is left in the frothy substance. 



The newly-hatched locusts are small and wingless editions 

 of the adult. They congregate together, and, having de- 

 voured all the food to be found in the neighbourhood of the 

 nest, proceed to migrate. Now is the time to stop them, 

 for they cannot fly, having not yet acquired wings. They 

 are, however, able to crawl over all natural obstacles. No- 

 thing, but a smooth vertical surface forms an effectual barrier 

 to them. The British Government in Cyprus have taken 

 advantage of this fact, and have erected numbers of canvas 

 screens, along the top of each of which is a strip of Ame- 

 rican cloth. The locusts swarm up the screens as far as the 

 American cloth. This they cannot negociate, and in their 

 endeavours fall into the jaws of death in the shape of zinc 

 pits dug for their reception, and up the smooth walls of 

 which they cannot climb. Before becoming fully grown, 



