$32 INSECTA—LOCUST. 
THE LOCUST! 
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Is about three inches long, and has two horns, or feelers, an inch in length. 
The head and horns are of a brownish color; it is blue about the mouth, as 
also on the inside of the larger legs. The shield that covers the back is 
greenish ; and the upper side of the body brown, spotted with black, and the 
under side purple. The upper wings are brown, with small dusky spots 
with one larger at the tips; the under wings are more transparent, and of 
alight brown, tinged with green; but there is a dark cloud of spots near 
the tips. 
There is no animal in the creation that multiplies so fast as this, if the 
sun be warm, and the soil in which their eggs are deposited be dry. — 
The Scripture, which was written in a country where the locust made a 
distinguished feature in the picture of nature, has given us several very 
striking images of this animal’s numbers and rapacity. It compares an 
army, where the numbers are almost infinite, to a swarm of locusts; it de- 
scribes them as rising out of the earth, where they are produced ; as pursu- 
ing a settled march to destroy the fruits of the earth, and co-operate with 
divine indignation. z 
When the locusts take the field, as we are assured, they have a leader at 
their head, whose flight they observe, and pay a strict attention to all his 
motions. They appear ata distance, like a black cloud, which, as it ap- 
proaches, gathers upon the horizon, and almost hides the light of the day. ‘~ 
It often happens, that the husbandman sees this imminent calamity pass away 
without doing him any mischief; and the whole swarm proceed onward to 
settle upon the labors of some less fortunate country. But wretched is the 
district upon which they settle; they ravage the meadow and the pasture 
ground; strip the trees of their leaves, and the garden of its beauty; the 
visitation of a few minutes destroys the expectations of a year; and a 
famine but too frequently ensues. In their native tropical climates, they 
are not so dreadful as in the southern parts of Europe. There, though the 
plafft and the forest be stripped of their verdure, the power of vegetation is 
1 Aoridium migratorium, Lat. 
