60 GRAMMAR OF ENTOMOLOGY. 



hundred miles in length, and so compact as com- 

 pletely to hide the sun, and occasion darkness. 



188. Mr. Barrow relates that, in Southern 

 Africa, in the years 1784 and 1797, a swarm of 

 locusts covered an area of nearly two thousand 

 square miles. When driven by a north-west wind 

 into the sea, they formed upon the shore, for fifty 

 miles, a bank three or four feet high : the stench 

 from their putrefying bodies was perceptible at 

 the distance of one hundred and fifty miles. 



189. In 1778 and 1780, a swarm of locusts 

 visited Morocco ; every green thing was eaten, 

 and a dreadful famine ensuing, such vast numbers 

 of people died of hunger in the streets of the 

 towns, that their bodies lay unburied. 



190. The egg of the locust is deposited in the 

 ground ; when it is hatched, it has all the appear- 

 ance of a locust in miniature, except that it is 

 without wings. Its work of destruction imme- 

 diately commences ; it devours every blade of 

 grass, every green leaf that it can obtain. 



191. In the autumn it assumes the winged 

 state, and then myriads assemble, and having 

 stripped the earth of its mantle of green, rise in 

 the air, and are driven by the wind, carrying with 

 them destruction, famine, and pestilence. 



192. The shape and. appearance of the locust 

 is that of our commonest grasshopper, but it 

 greatly exceeds that insect in size ; it leaps with 



