238 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [October, 



pers pelting his hocks and haunch. . Turning round to find whence 

 this insect shower came, I witnessed what was to me an extra- 

 ordinary spectacle, though common enough of course in the 

 East. A large cloud, denser in its lower than in its upper part, 

 filled an eighth part of the western hemicycle. The remotei* 

 portion of it was as thick, as brown and brumous, as a London 

 fog. The nearer side opened suddenly up into millions, and 

 billions, and trillions, and sextillions of the same green and yel- 

 low insects, pelting in a close winged crowd quite as thickly as 

 flakes of snow upon all the hillsides near and far. You could not 

 stand a moment against the aggressive and offensive rain of these 

 buzzing creatures. The horses even swung themselves round 

 and stood with lowered crests, taking the storm upon their backs 

 and flanks. You had to turn up the collar of your coat to keep 

 them out of your neck, and button the front not to have your 

 pockets filled with the repulsive swarm, which in two minutes had 

 so peppered the whole scene round about that its color and char- 

 acter were entirely altered. Every little creature of the inter- 

 minable flight on alighting veered himself round head to wind 

 on the earth, just as if he had dropped anchor and swung to the 

 breeze; and it was curious to notice that the general tint on the 

 ground of their countless bodies was brown if you looked to wind- 

 Ward, and green if you gazed to leeward. But very quickly the 

 only green to be seen round about was the hue afforded by this 

 sudden invasion. Even while we prepared to yield up the spot 

 to them and pack our lunch baskets for departure they had cleared 

 off grass and leaves and every verdant thing around: and where 

 they rose again from the soil, or from any clump of trees in a 

 hungry throng, the place they quitted had already assumed a 

 barren and wintry aspect. The Syrian peasants passing along 

 the roads were beating their breasts and cursing the ill-fortune 

 of this plague. Some of them, none the less, gathered up a 

 clothful of the noxious things; for the locust is distinctly edible. 

 Half in wrath and revenge and half for a novelty in diet, the 

 Arabs to this day eat a few of them, roasting them in wire nets 

 or in earthern vessels over a slow fire till the wings and legs drop 

 off, and the locust becomes crisp, in which state it tastes, as I am 

 able to say from personal experiment, something like an unsalted 

 prawn. But it seemed as if, had all Syria and the globe itself 

 taken to living on locusts, they would hardly have made a sensi- 



