LOCUSTS AND GRASSHOPPERS. 205 



as a herdsman and a gatherer of sycomore fruit, enjoyed 

 exceptional facihties for observation of external nature. 



Orthoptera, as it happens, of all the leading tribes 

 of insects are the only one that increase in size and 

 development of wings in the mature state, and this 

 development in Italy and the Avarm lo"\vlands of Switzer- 

 land is not completed till early September. Now, be it 

 carefully noted that Amos does not only record the 

 development of Orthoptera in the imago condition, but he 

 also particularizes very carefully the exact period of the 

 year when that development took place. The seer tAvice 

 reiterates the same truth, that it was when the season was 

 well advanced. The beginning of the shooting up of the 

 latter growth — the latter growth, after the king's moAvings, 

 i.e., the second hay crop, termed rowing in Hertfordshire, 

 and aftermath in the north cf England. 



The Faroe Isles, so far as I am aware^ constitute the 

 northern limit of Orthoptera, and only one orthopterous 

 insect, Forjicnla auricularia, the common earwig (itself one 

 of the most rudimentary forms of the extensive family to 

 w^hich it belongs), s found in that archipelago. I took 

 occasion to assure myself by testhig the development of 

 the earwig in the Faroes by collecting the Forjicula from 

 the blossoms of Caltlia eu-palustris, which it had gnawed 

 nearly down to the calyx, when my steamer anchored off 

 the Faroes on her voyage to Iceland, and by capturing other 

 specimens in the same place on my return thither five weeks 

 later, and marking the increase of size in the intowal. The 

 locusts that according to Revelations ix, 3, came out of the 

 «moke upon the earth may be only metaphorically so, with 

 hair of women, teeth as of lions, crowns of gold, and stings 

 of scorpions — at all events unlike any species now known to 

 ■science. 



There are seventeen passages in all in Holy Writ referring 

 to Orthoptera.* And as far as we can infer nine species 

 of locust are intended, though even as regards this asser- 

 tion some uncertainty prevails because the same Hebrew 

 word gob is rendered locust by our translators in Isaiah 

 xxxiii, 4j and is rendered by them grasshopper in 

 Amos vii, 1. 



* More tlian this number, probably between twenty and thirty, but 

 some of the remaining passages are not so graphic and descriptive as 

 'those here quoted. — F. A. W. 



