2 |June, 
dical, which has an extensive circulation on the continent, asking 
whether the species had been seen, at or about that time, in the south 
of Europe ; but no intelligence whatever has reached me of this insect 
having been observed elsewhere in Europe. 
According to Serville, and other orthopterists, this species occurs 
in vast myriads in central and eastern Asia, also in Arabia and the 
northern and north-western parts of Africa, and it is a species pre- 
eminently destructive to vegetation. Indeed, it is very probable that 
this is the very species, the ravages of which the prophet Joel so elo- 
quently describes. 
If this flight of locusts had reached us from the north of Africa, 
it is scarcely likely that the passage would have escaped notice m Spain, 
Italy, or France. The total silence of continental naturalists on this 
matter leads me to suspect, that the individuals which reached our 
shores were the straggling remains of a large horde, which, having set out 
from the coast of north-western Africa, and having been caught by the 
south-easterly winds, was mostly destroyed far out at sea; but that, 
owing, perhaps, to some westerly change of the wind, or to the “ survival 
of the fittest,” or in other words of the strongest, a few straggling de- 
tachments arrived here to claim British protection. 
There has lately been mentioned a very remarkable instance of the 
very lofty flight of migratory locusts in (I believe) India, by Lieut. 
Herschel. That gentleman was examining the sun with a telescope, 
and was amazed to see the passage of an immense number of minute 
bodies across the dise of that luminary, and which he at first mistook 
for aérolites. On altering, however, the focus of the instrument, so as 
to bring into view a distant cloud, he found that these moving bodies 
were locusts, in the act of migrating. 
As further illustration of the immense height at which flight is 
sustained by some living beings, I may mention a curious fact that pre- 
sented itself some years ago to two of my sons. They were engaged 
one afternoon in examining the spots on the sun, having for that pur- 
pose thrown the image upon a screen, when they observed, to their 
amusement, a bird fly slowly across the disc, moving its wings by dis- 
tinct and regular flaps, after the mode common to long-winged birds, 
The passage across the face of the sun occupied, as nearly as they 
could guess, about a second and a half of time; from which circum- 
stance, and from the distinctness of the figure, it may be inferred that 
the height from the earth must have been immense. 
It is strange that we have acquired so little actual knowledge of the 
migrations of animals by means of flight. We see swallows and other 
