l894-] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 239 



ble mark upon the extraordinary number that drifted that day 

 ov^er our heads. St. John the Baptist is said to have supported 

 existence upon that sort of " locust" which grows on the carob 

 tree, a kind of sweet bean; but this is very probably a mistake 

 of the commentators, who did not wish history to feed so distin- 

 guished a character upon a diet so disgusting. Probably he, too, 

 ate dried grasshoppers, for there is no doubt whatever that East- 

 erners have already retaliated upon these devourers of their crops 

 by in turn devouring them. No better proof is wanted of this 

 than the constant practice of the Arabs to-day, and that verse in 

 Leviticus which runs, " Thou mayest eat the locust after his kind, 

 the bald locust after his kind, the beetle after his kind, and the 

 grasshopper after his kind." 



The flying plague passed away almost •as quickly as it had 

 come, disappearing over Jezreel and the Jordan in the same long, 

 low brown cloud. But the earth remained for a long time strewn 

 with them, almost as closely as if none had taken wing. Every 

 depression in the ground, every horse-hoof mark, was filled with 

 dozens or scores of them, spitting a green juice and always head 

 to wind; and what we observed was nothing — be it remembered — 

 compared to the flights witnessed in southern Africa and else- 

 where. Borrow, in his travels, speaks of the ground being cov- 

 ered by them over an area of 2000 square miles. Travelers tell 

 of wide rivers, the water of which becomes invisible on account 

 of the dead bodies of these insects floating on the surface. The 

 Albert Nyanza is called by the natives the " Muta Nzigi," or 

 "lake of the white locusts," from the enormous masses of these 

 creatures which drown in its waves and are washed up on its 

 shores in pestiferous heaps. That is the worst of the locust. In 

 inhabited countries it is almost more dreadful dead than aUve — 

 poisoning the cattle and spreading disease. It must be, however, 

 an excellent manure in desolate regions, and no doubt, in some 

 wonderful way of nature, manages to expiate its ravages by its 

 agricultural usefulness. In Cyprus the English government has 

 waged a long and costly war with this Gryllus migratorius, but 

 if anybody had sat with us at lunch that day upon the hill in 

 Esdraelon, it seems to me he would have backed the locusts 

 against the strongest and richest government that ever went to 

 war with its winged host. 



