RS 
ee a VOLUME VII. | Vity; 
REMARKS ON THE RECENT MIGRATION TO BRITAIN OF ACRIDIUM 
PEREGRINUM, A LOCUST NEW TO THE EUROPEAN FAUNA. 
BY EDWIN BROWN. 
By a very singular coincidence, on the very day in October last 
when the clergymen of the Church of England were reading to their 
congregations that sublime description by Joel of the ravages of the 
locust, which formed part of the lessons for the day, a flight of locusts, 
new to Europe, was silently spreading itself over this island. On the 
Monday and Tuesday following the Sunday above-mentioned, two spe- 
cimens of a species of locust were captured in the brewery yards of 
this town. These proved to be Acridium peregrinum of Olivier; a 
species not mentioned in any work upon European Orthoptera. 
Several notices appeared in the newspapers about the same time 
of isolated occurrences of locusts in different parts of the country, as, 
for instance, at Waterford, in Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Derby- 
shire, Staffordshire, and Nottinghamshire; but not, as far as I am 
aware, further north than Derbyshire. In several of these recorded 
eases, I satisfactorily ascertained the species to be A. peregrinum; and 
as, apparently, no specimen of Pachyteles migratoria fell under the 
notice of any entomologist in this country last autumn, it is fair to 
presume that all the cases mentioned in the public papers, in or about 
October last, were those of A. peregrinum. 
Mr. Bond informs me that at Plymouth many specimens were 
taken, and that in one case, at least, this insect was thought to be an 
escaped canary by those who saw it flying about the gardens in that 
town. 
These new visitors seem to have reached our south and south-west 
coasts, and to have spread themselves very sparsely over about one-half 
the length of England, and also to have reached the south of Ireland. 
But how did they reach us? From whence did the swarm start that 
honoured us with a visit P 
In the hope of eliciting some information on this point, I caused a 
notice of the occurrence to be inserted in a French entomological perio- 
