508 Extracts from tlie ]\linule-Book of t lie Linuean Society. 



they are furnished with Avings ; but they still remain 

 leaping, though with additional power, being now as- 

 sisted by their wings. Towards the end of the month 

 and about the beginning of July, they cast oft' the whole 

 of their upper hard covering, and become perfect flying 

 Locusts. In this state they are exceedingly destructive, 

 even to places at great distances ; for their tlight is rapid, 

 and they are in such prodigious swarms, that their ap- 

 pearance in the air resembles a dense black cloud, 

 obscuring the sun's rays, which when they penetrate, 

 make these swarms appear like some object burning in 

 the atmosphere. Alighting on the corn-fields, they in 

 the space of a few hours devour every green thing, and 

 convert immense tracts of cultivated land into absolute 

 deserts, while nothing seems to impede their progress. 



" In August the Locusts are observed busily twining 

 themselves in pairs upon the ground : they are then in 

 the act of copulation. In September they pierce, bj^ 

 means of their tail, small holes in the earth, in which 

 they deposit their eggs in small bags, rapidly flapping 

 their wings at the same time. Soon after this opera- 

 tion the insect dies. 



" Various methods have been adopted to destroy the 

 insect, either by ploughing the fields, and collecting the 

 eggs ; or, in the spring, at the dawn of day, while the in- 

 sect is yet in the crawling state, by setting fire to straw 

 which has been thrown over the locust-hillocks ; or by 

 sweeping them into sacks and destroying them. In the 

 leaping state wide sacks are employed, into which they 

 are driven by a person furnished with a broom ; or by 

 means of deep trenches dug in the field, into which they 



are 



