18 SPLENDID 



for information, when (to say nothing of the journals of 

 modern travellers) they may turn in their Bibles to a more 

 graphic description of the locust march than ever pen of 

 traveller put to paper. 



England produces various Locustidoe, insignificant in amount 

 of destructiveness and size inconspicuous, also, with regard 

 to colour; but there are certain foreign insects of the same 

 tribe whereon nature has been most profuse of ornament ; 

 their wings, as in some of the exotic grasshoppers before men- 

 tioned, displaying the most splendid combinations of colour, 

 not enamelled, as in some brilliant beetles, nor laid in mosaic, 

 as in the butterfly, but dyed, as it were, through the trans- 

 parent or semi-transparent substances of the wings or wing- 

 cases, which, in this tribe, are technically called tegmina. 



For beautiful figures of these superb insects, we may refer 

 our readers to the elegantly illustrated works of Stoll and of 

 Madame Merian. 



We must say good-bye for the present to our grasshopper 

 and the " Epicurean " fellows of his order, but not without a 

 concluding word or two on their singular fitness to represent 

 the low sensual enjoyments of us, their "earth-born" and 

 earthy fellow-beings. If not the happiest, they are all cer- 

 tainly among the idlest of insects, eminently players, as dis- 

 tinguished from those which mingle work and play together ; 

 and if we adhere still to the naturalist's division of their tribe 

 into its three distinct families of grasshopper, cricket, and 



