1788 The Zoologist— August, 1869. 



March, 1803, for many days successively there was an immense flight 

 of white and yellow bi.tterflies, probably of the same tribe as the 

 cabbage butterfly. They were observed never to settle but proceeded 

 in a direction from north-west to south-east. No buildings seemed to 

 stop them from steadily pursuing their course ; which being to the 

 ocean, at only a small distance, they must consequently perish. It is 

 remarked that at this time no other kind of butterfly was to be seen, 

 though the country usually abounds in such a variety. Major Moor, 

 while stationed at Bombay, as he was playing at chess one evening 

 with a fiiend in Old Woman's Island, near that place, witnessed an 

 immense flight of plant-bugs, which were going westward : they were 

 so numerous as to cover every thing in the apartment in which he was 

 sitting. When staying at Aldeburgh, on the eastern coast, I have, at 

 certain times, seen innumerable insects upon the beach close to the 

 waves, and apparently washed uj) by them ; though wetted, they were 

 quite alive. It is remarkable, that of the emigrating insects here 

 enumerated, the majority — for instance the lady-birds, sawflies, 

 dragonflies, ground-beetles, frog-hoppers, &c. — are not usually social 

 insects, but seem to emigrate, like swallows, merely for the purpose of 

 emigration. What incites them to this is one of those mysteries of 

 nature which at present we cannot penetrate." — Kirby and Spence, 

 vol. ii. p. 9. 



Of the Locust, usually termed migratory, volumes might be written, 

 and indeed have been written. The migratory locust, like other 

 insects just enumerated, is not essentially a social insect: it is 

 not influenced by those domestic propensities which induce bees, 

 wasps, ants or Termites to associate ; and yei how far beyond 

 calculation are their numbers that congregate. The records, be- 

 ginning fifteen centuries before the Chiistiau era, and continuing 

 up to the present time, are so accordant that one might serve 

 for all. Omitting the plague of locusts which visited Egypt 

 before the Exodus of the Israelites, and which stands on inspired 

 authority, we shall find that profane history treats in the clearest and 

 most unmistakable language of similar plagues in the years of our era, 

 591, 1478, 1650, 1748, 1778 to 1780 (in this instance extending over 

 rather more than two years), 1784, 1797, 1799 and 1811. As a matter 

 of course the earlier records are at longer intervals than the later ones; 

 but it does not follow that the phenomena were less frequent. The 

 records of 1811 are perhaps the most complete of all, and the pheuo- 



