iSgi.] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 163 



about the end of October, were overrunning the neighboring land of Haba 

 and Shiadma by the end of November, and were subsequently heard of 

 in various parts of the interior, and still later from the important grain- 

 producing districts round Mazagan and Casablanca. Late reports from 

 Mazagan were that they were settling down there, and busy laying their 

 eggs, which caused great anxiety for the Spring crops, the young locusts, 

 though unable to fly, being even more unsparing in their devastations 

 than the adult insects. In addition to the damage done to green crops, 

 groves of olive and almond trees were stripped of their bark in several 

 districts, where the next yield of oil and almonds will be seriously affected. 

 In some places farmers had to hurriedly gather their olives before they 

 were ripe to save them from the voracious insects No general and con- 

 tinued measures are taken, as in Algeria and Australia, against these 

 pests, the only way in which their numbers seem to be materially reduced 

 being the collection of large quantities for sale as food among the natives. 

 They are not "unclean" to either Jew or Mohomedan, though prawns, 

 to which they are compared in flavor by some Europeans who have tasted 

 them, are not eaten. Taken into the town in camel loads in heaping 

 sackfuls of ruddy brown or greenish yellow insects (the first color in Au- 

 tumn, the latter in Spring); they are first boiled in salt and water, then 

 fried or parched. The same method seems to have been in vogue, ac- 

 cording to old writers, early in the last century. When properly preserved 

 the locust was looked upon as a convenient form of food for travelers to 

 take with them on the road. A fearsome story was recently told in the 

 Mellah, or Jew's quarter of Mogador, that two little children, sent to fetch 

 water at a village in Shiadma not returning, their parents went in search 

 of them and found only a heap of bones thickly covered with locusts. 

 It was further reported that a consignment of locusts from that district 

 came in and was sold chiefly in the Mellah, and that many Jews fell ill in 

 consequence of having unwittingly partaken of insects which had eaten 

 human flesh. — London Tivies. 



Identiflcation of Insects (Imagos) for Subscribers. 



Specimens will be named under the following conditions : 1st, The number of speci- 

 mens to be unlimited for each sending; 2d, The sender to pay all expenses of transporta- 

 tion and the insects to become the property of the American Entomological Society ; 

 3d, Each specimen must have a number attached so that the identification may be an- 

 nounced accordingly. Address all packages to Entomological News, Academy Natural 

 Sciences, Logan Square, Philadelphia, Pa. 



