134 REV. F. A. WALKER, D.D., F.L.S. 
that the food may be dried in the sun. For my own part, I do not feel at all 
sure that this is so. It seems to me that what really does occur is this : when 
the harvest is over, and the ants have no chance of obtaining further sup- 
plies of grain, they set to work and dress the corn and seeds they have 
collected, taking off the husks, which they bring out and throw on the 
ground around their nests, so that one sees a great number of circular 
masses of chaff, which, if examined, are found to consist of the husks 
of corn and grass seeds. This is one of the instances we meet with, 
showing what very acute observers the writers of the Holy Scriptures 
were, and that there is no reason to doubt the statement of Agur in the 
Book of Proverbs, to which I have referred. Another question of great 
interest is that which is connected with another class of insects—the locusts. 
I have brought some of those insects here to-night, because it is not 
often that people in England can see them in what represents two 
different stages of their existence. (In the smaller bottle are some 
locusts quite young—probably not more than a week or two old—small, 
black creatures.) The locusts traverse Eastern countries in immense numbers, 
thousands of millions. I have seen them in a column nearly a yard broad 
anda mile long, and I have noticed that when they meet with any 
obstruction they will go on either side of it ; they do not run, but make 
progress by a series of jumps, and though the natives dig trenches for them, 
and throw earth over them in order to smother them, and sometimes pile 
them in great heaps and throw brushwood over them, and set fire to it, 
they are unable to exterminate them.* When growing they become of 
a yellow colour, and shed their skins. I have seen them hanging to the 
branches of the olive and other trees, and wriggling out of their skins, after 
which they grow to the size of the locusts shown in the larger bottle I have 
here, and it is when they have reached that stage that they do the enormous 
amount of damage we so frequently hear of. The account of the invasion 
of locusts given in the Book of Joel is accurate to the most minute particular. 
It is, indeed, a most wonderful description ; but there is one expression 
in it which I think is rather obscure to us in England. I refer to the 
passage :—“ He hath barked my fig-tree ..... the branches thereof are 
made white.” This, however, is exactly what the locusts do. They eat all 
the leaves off the fig-tree, and then eat the bark off the smaller branches 
where it is soft and succulent, and the ends are left standing out quite white, 
So as to give a weird appearance to the tree. They also clear the olive-tree, 
taking away every leaf, but not eating the bark. Another peculiarity they 
have is that they do not break their ranks. They stand together, perhaps 
eight or ten in a row, in one place, and eight or ten in another, just like 
cavalry, while the noise they make is said to be like that of running horses. 
* In a small Blue-book just published, Mr. S. Brown, Government 
engineer, reporting on the locust campaign in Cyprus in 1885-86, states 
that the estimated number of egg-cases was 5,076,000,000 in 1883-84, 
while in 1885-86 the number was slightly over 249,000,000,—ED. 
