April, 1918 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 29 
which the King James translators regarded as locusts or grass- 
hoppers, gob, plural gobim. In Isaiah, XX XIII. “Your spoil 
shall be gathered like the gathering of the chasil; as the running 
to and fro of gobim shall he run.” Notice that the gobim seem 
to be runners, which is only metaphorically the case with swarms 
of locusts. In Amos, VII, 1, “the Lord formed grasshoppers 
(gobai) in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth 
of the king’s mowing.” In Nahum, III, 15-17, “the sword shall 
eat thee up like the cankerworm: make thyself many as the 
cankerworm (jelek), make thyself many as the gobar. The 
cankerworm spoileth, and fleeth away. Thy crowned are as the 
locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers (gobai), 
which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun 
ariseth they flee away.” 
To agree with many commentators that gobai are “locusts in 
their caterpillar state” seems rather absurd, even passing by the 
allusion to Orthopterous larve as caterpillars. But, too, it is not 
easy to understand why a prominent traveler and scholar should 
waste time trying to identify arbeh, having the Arabic arbah 
before him, with a particular gregarious locust which he quotes 
with the present-day Arab name of djerad. 
The only occurrence of gazam besides that already quoted is in 
Amos, IV, 9, “ when your olive trees increased the palmerworm 
devoured them.” By following the Septuagint and the Vulgate, 
and regarding gazam as caterpillars, one is reminded of a second- 
ary Greek word for caterpillar, phalena, those which radiate out 
in devastating swarms like the ten fingers, but these seem to be 
cut worms, ground dwellers and not likely to defoliate olive trees. 
There is only one occurrence of chargol. The word is also 
present-day Arabic and is interpreted as “innumerably swarm- 
ing,’ 7. €., presumably one of the many locust species. The Sep- 
tuagint rendering as ophiomaches is a reminder of a curious 
Greek superstition, mentioned by Aristotle, that certain locusts 
fought and killed snakes. The Septuagint probably took their 
cue from Aristotle. 
The Septuagint erred by translating jalek as bruchus five times 
out of eight occurrences. The Aristotelian conception of bruchus 
is not our beetle now known by that name. The favorite 
