330 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No '436 



hara. By nine o'clock we had reached Menerville, where the fertile 

 plain of Metidja ends, and the mountain country of the Kabyles be- 

 gins. We were toiling up a steep ascent, when the order was given 

 for all the passengers to alight. There had been a landslip, making 

 the passage of a viaduct dangerous, so we had to get out and 

 walk across it while the train cautiously followed us. Suddenly 

 a cry was raised: "Voild, les sauterelles," and there before us, in 

 the transparent air, looking like a summer snowstorm, we saw 

 approaching a dancing cloud of winged particles. It was the ad- 

 vance guard of the dreaded locust army marching on Algiers. 



For weeks nothing had been talked about in the neighborhood 

 of my old home but " les sauterelles." Everybody, French, Eng- 

 lish, or Arab, who owned a vineyard, or even a garden, was cal- 

 culating the chances of the approach of the invading scourge, 

 sometimes in a manner not intelligible to strangers. There was a 

 lady not long arrived from England, whose knowledge of French 

 was limited, and who asked me: " Who are these people, the 

 Sauterelles, of whom every one is talking, but whom I have not 

 yet met?" The day before starting on our journey I had been 

 present at a wedding at one of the loveliest villas in Mustapha, to 

 which the governor-general. Monsieur Jules Cambon, had come, 

 on the very morrow of his arrival, to show his regard for his Eng- 

 lish friend, the bridegroom. When it was rumored that his ex- 

 cellency had accepted the invitation, all the well-informed de- 

 clared that the new governor could not possibly be fulfilling social 

 duties, when the locusts had appeared at St. Pierre-St. Paul, 

 thirty-five kilometres distant from the capital. As a matter of 

 fact, Monsieur Cambon, with the energy which characterizes that 

 most amiable and distinguished Frenchman, after assisting at the 

 wedding, set out, twenty-four hours later, on a tour of inspection 

 of the ravaged districts, and I only mention this incident to show 

 how the advance of the locusts was the sole absorbing topic of the 

 hour in Algeria. 



Here at last we were face to face with, or rather surrounded on 

 aU sides by, the devastating hordes. The railway crawls up the 

 Kabyle hill country, through a succession of gorges, interrupted 

 here and there by a tunnel, and sometimes the line skirts the clifif- 

 side, hanging on a terraced ledge over a rushing river of the color 

 of cafe ail lait. The mountain defiles are thick with the flight of 

 rushing insect life, but here in these barren passes there is nothing 

 for them to prey upon, only a tuft of cactus here and there perched 

 on the side of a torrent, or a solitary cluster of acanthus. But 

 now the hUls recede, and we are once more in the fruitful plains. 

 How can I describe the glories of early summer in Algeria? 

 English tourists come in the winter, and leave in the spring, tak- 

 ing away an impression of rare hours of sunshine, scattered among 

 days of storm, and of scirocco, and sometimes, as this year, of 

 snow ; but it is in May that the full beauty of northern Africa 

 comes forth in its wealth of flowers. We were now passing 

 through a valley bounded by majestic snow-crowned heights, 

 which appeared literally to be carpeted with a luxuriant growth 

 of gorgeously tinted flowers — yellow marguerites, white and pink 

 cistus, scarlet poppies, purple orchids, crimson gladiolus, and 

 blue convolvulus — and sailing above this gay ribbon border of the 

 fresh green of the vineyards, sped along the fluttering host of 

 locusts, farther in all directions than the eye could reach. It 

 seemed like a never-ending swarm of bees, bees as large indeed 

 almost as skylarks, or at all events as humming-birds, but instead 

 of bringing with it the proverbial luck of " a swarm of bees in 

 May," it was carrying in its wake ruin and despair to the Mussul- 

 mans of the soil and their Christian conquerors. 



It is popularly supposed that the locusts eat their way from 

 place to place, and that the whole region through which a flight 

 of them has passed is left devastated and bare. We saw no trace 

 of the passage of the plague on our way, and, as a matter of 

 fact, the locusts in their progress do comparatively little harm. 

 The mischief is done when they settle and lay their eggs, which, 

 when hatched, briog forth myriads of young — '^ les criqiiets," 

 and it is they which eat up the land. ... It is difficult without 

 seeming to exaggerate, to attempt any estimate of the countless 

 myriads of criqiiets which are produced by the sauterelles. I will 

 only mention one example, which may afiford some idea of their 

 numbers. In one commune alone during the last two months the 



weekly destruction of eggs has amounted to from eighteen to 

 twenty millions. 



Some years ago, when I was very little, I remember seeing a flight 

 of locusts on the Mediterranean as we neared the coast of Algeria 

 on the voyage from Marseilles. My childish recollection of it was 

 that in the distance we saw a dense cloud approaching, and that 

 when the ship passed through it, we seemed to be enveloped in a 

 London fog for the space of several minutes. I have often thought 

 that my young fancy had exaggerated the phenomenon, but though 

 the swarms we passed through to-day were not densely packed, 

 the numbers we encountered must have immeasurably exceeded 

 the mass which I then saw flying across the sea from headland to 

 headland. From MenervUle to Bouira is a distance of seventy 

 kUomotres — between forty and fifty miles — yet never once was 

 there a break in the procession. I had a reason for gazing atten- 

 tively through the carriage windows. When I was seven years 

 old I had driven by my father's side, in the days before railways 

 were thought of in the Kabyle country, and as we approached the 

 village at sunset, we saw a lion drinking at a stream. That is 

 fourteen years ago, and it makes me feel a very ancient inhabitant 

 of Algeria to think that I have seen, as a not extraordinary inci- 

 dent of a peaceful drive, a lion, which the most intrepid hunters 

 have now to penetrate far into the heart of Africa to get a shot at. 



After Bouira, as we approached the Department of Constantine, 

 the locusts disappeared, and the next morning, in the picturesque 

 capital of the eastern province, we could not find a line about the 

 sauterelles in the curious little sheets, half a dozen of which do duty 

 as journals in every town of Algeria. Nothing of greater interest 

 was paragraphed than the visit of Admiral Duperre and the offi- 

 cers of the fleet from Philippeville to the old Roman fortress, and 

 the complimentary remarks of Lieutenant Viaud (better known to 

 the world as Pierre Loti) about the incomparable site of the rocky 

 ramparts towering above the abysses of the Roumel. 



A day later we went on to Hamman Meskroutine, where are the 

 famous hot sulphur springs which rush steaming from the earth, 

 forming cascades over petrified terraces of the dazzling whiteness 

 of alabaster. Just as we were driving along the flower -bordered 

 road which leads to this most beautiful sight, against a thunder- 

 cloud which hung threateningly over the mountains, we espied 

 between us and the dark background thousands of yellow flecks — 

 they were our friends, the locusts, again. This lovely spot is in 

 the midst of a vine country. Though the land was in full beauty, 

 it was too late for tourists, and every one we saw there was con- 

 nected more or less with the locality, from the Jewesses, in their 

 grave mediasval costumes, come from Constantine or Tunis for the 

 baths, to the small French proprietors, who sat round us at the 

 table-d'hote ; and every tongue sounded the voice of lamentation 

 at the appearance of the pest. 



It was no passing cloud, as we realized the following morning, 

 when we went on by train towards the frontier of Tunisia. The 

 railway carriages of the Chemin de Fer de I'Est-Algerien are fitted 

 with a little gallery which runs the length of the compartments, 

 and very amusing it is to sit and watch the passengers lolling or 

 promenading, especially as a large proportion of them are grave 

 Arab chiefs, of charming manners and of splendid presence, in 

 their graceful bm-nous. To-day the sons of the desert laid aside 

 some of their dignified impassiveness, for no sooner had we started 

 than we found ourselves among a host of locusts. It will hardly 

 be credited when I say that far above the clatter of the train was 

 heard the whirr of the countless wings. We passed through a 

 mountain valley about a kilometre in width, and the whole ex- 

 panse seemed blocked with the, clamoring mob of insect life, and 

 when the valley widened out into the fertile vine-clad plains that 

 stretch around Guelma — where a generation ago Gerard, the re- 

 nowned tireur de lions commenced his fame — as far as our sight 

 could travel danced in the sunlight the yellow phalanx. 



Algeria is so familiar to me, who have spent in that country 

 nineteen out of my twenty-one winters, that I do not know if it 

 be necessary to describe the geographical situation of the places I 

 have mentioned, and of other localities ravaged by the locust 

 plague. The three departments of Oran, Algiers, and Constantine, 

 which compose the colony, stretch from Morocco on the west to 

 Tunisia on the east, the city of Algiers standing about half-way 



