36 — 



the woman watciiing a marrow plot raised a rock in 

 both hands to crush me, and finally a lithe arab girl 

 thinking my gauze net a desirable acquisition, seized 

 hold of it and did her best to wrest it out of my hands, 

 only leaving go when a man with a fowling piece appeared 

 on the scene. 



„Jerusalem!" exclaims Lamartine, ,,is Queen of the 

 Desert. Every local name retains in it some mystery, 

 each rocky height reverberates the accent of some pro- 

 phecy, every cavern speaks of futurity". Ladies resident 

 at Jerusalem still occupy themselves with the Babylonian 

 numbers and return of the ,years to their pristine course. 

 One morning I called on a Miss Powle, who I surprised 

 takinglessons in Greek, and she favoured me with a calcu- 

 lation of social interest; a Spanish" Jewess, conversant 

 in a Babel of languages, who I chatted with in the after- 

 noon on a seat in front of the Russian buildings, where 

 the church bells were clattering their tune of Kolokolof, 

 informed -me she was confident the world was coming 

 to an end, and as she said so I saw her dark eyes glitter 

 with terroï. What is remarkable, the prophetic dates 

 of divines calculated bjr lunations and generally believed 

 in, prove in many instances to be the astronomical years 

 of most and fewest sunspots. The authority, according 

 to Mr. Gratton Guiness, has been that rare book written 

 by the Swiss astronomer M. de Cheseaux, who found 

 that 1260 and 2300 deduced from the Book of Daniel 

 were more accurate numbers for calculating the return 

 of the eclipses than the 19 years of Meton, and when 

 added to the date of the Hegira A. D. 622, or to the 

 ecclesiastical decress of the Roman emperors in A. D. 533 

 and A. D. 607, the former brings us to the French Revo- 

 lution and troubles in Turkey. Results that suggest the 

 devious circuit of the moon is dependant on the wax and 

 wane of the sunspots. It is a certain sign, said the poet 

 Virgil, when the sun rises with spots upon its face; and 

 then mariners in all ages have feared a tempest. Of late 

 certainly cyclones and heat waves have followed the 

 appearance of large groups and a clear sun has announced 

 a frost. In Saint Luke's gospel we alone read ,,And there 

 shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the 

 stars; and upon the earth distress of nations with per- 

 plexity, the sea and the waves roaring". When we read 

 in the older prophets that before the day of tribulation 

 the sun wiU be turned into sackcloth and the moon into 

 blood, the meaning is less definite; both sun and moon 

 appear red during a fog or dust storm, when the moon 

 eclipses the sun it is darkened and when the earth eclipses 

 the moon it is rust coloured. We have seen gorgeous 

 sunsets when the sun has been spotted, and were it 

 extinguished probably the moon would reflect a red light. 

 There is no reason why the sun should not grow dark 

 and leave our earth encased in ice. But there are those 

 in the pulpit and out of it, who think it will come into 

 collision with a comet, a falling star, or meteorite; or 

 dissolve in fire. 



Then as to the portents, the signs of the seasons, 

 the plagues of locusts, the earthquakes and famines, 

 whose periodicity can be investigated by the naturalist. 

 One day some arab girls brought round the door a litter 

 of sandy and dun-coloured rabbits, for which they were 

 offered a German half piaster stamped with a plough 

 on the reverse: they said it was a bad one and wished a 

 metallic, with which they were so pleased that they 

 confessed they wished the piaster also. When Canon 

 Tristram went down from Jerusalem to Jericho he 

 remarked that in the wilderness of Judea the sand 

 partridges took the jDlace of their more strongly marked 

 counterpart on the hills; that the hare was toned down 

 to the prevailing russet and that the foxes and larks were 



light brown: here of old were villages named after the 

 patridge sand lionesses and an ascent of brown scorpions. 

 The flying locusts destructive in Syria have the tint of 

 the desert sand: the arabs tell you they know of two 

 destructive kinds the yellow, flying, Gerad teyar or 

 nedyak ; and the whitish, devouring. Gerad sahaf : Nahum, 

 who with the other Jewish prophets caUed the Assyrian 

 soldiers locusts, told them to make^ themselves" manjr 

 as the Jelek and make themselves many as the Arbeh." 

 The first, the Jelek, is no doubt the common plague on 

 the coast of the Mediterranean Staronotus Maroccanus, 

 the leaping, licking cankerworm that Jerome says 

 congregates, and which Nahum says increases, spreadeth 

 itself, and fleeth away. like our meadow grasshopper, its 

 males when arrived at maturity have a minute comb on 

 the inner side of the shank of either hind leg, which when 

 these are fiddled over the veins of the fore-wings, causes 

 them to resound like a violin. The prophet Jeremiah 

 threatens Babylon and says, ,, Surely I will thee with 

 men as with the cankerworm and they shall hft up a 

 shout against thee", and calls to the horses of Ararat, 

 Minni and Askenaz, to come upas the prickly cankerworm. 

 I did not see it at Jerusalem. The larger, greyer Schisto- 

 cerca peregrinum is not musical, but is said to make a 

 patter, when flying, withits long wings. The prophet Joel 

 may be understood to say, „Like the noise of chariots 

 on the tops of hills", mountains do not exist, „do they 

 leap, and their noise is like a flame of fire that devoureth 

 the stubble.'" A pink variety of the Pilgrim Locust 

 swarms in central and southern Africa, where it is known 

 as the Red Locust. The Migratory Locust, Pachytylus 

 migratorius. Doctor Pesta met with in the Lebanon. It 

 wafted north to England in little flocks in 1842; from 

 1846 to 1849: and from 1857 to 1859; in 1864, 1868 

 and 1869; from 1874 to 1876. ,About 1859 I saw one at 

 Bath in Somerstshire. 



,,It would be difficult not to recognise the millenium 

 of Isaiah in the gradual progress seen in the suburbs of 

 Jerusalem", said my missionary friend, Mr. Joseph, to 

 me one morning as we passed down the native Sook, 

 or market; ,,it is depicted in the villa residences adorned 

 with the cedar, acacia, myrtle and olive; the Cyprus, 

 the plane and the box." And no doubt the time will 

 arrive when the dromedaries will no longer come rdaring 

 with loads of building stones and the white asses for 

 ladies; Balaam donkeys of Egyptian mettle and lame 

 horses, will become a past creation. Now, the locusts 

 are rather a curiosity than a terror ; they are seldom seen ; 

 even the prophet Joel asks the inhabitants of Jeru- 

 salem. „Hath this been in your days or in 

 the days of your fathers?" Let us investigate 

 their more recent injury to market produce. At the 

 commencement of the last century locusts aboun- 

 ded in southern Europe, and about the year 1816 Bochard 

 encountered a swarm at Naeme east of the Jordan; the 

 arabs called them Gerad Teyer, and it was astronomically 

 a time of most sunspots. In 1827 and 1828 Captain 

 Charles Frankland saw remarkable flights of the Stauro- 

 notus Maroccanus, a small yellow locust, pass over 

 Smyrna during the hot weather at the close of July; 

 and in 1829 when the rainfall was unusual in Europe, 

 came the year of most sunspots. In October, 1832, 

 Lamartine found the plague at Jerusalem; in 1833, 

 which was a year of fewest sunspots, a flock of golden 

 coloured locusts that shone canary yellow in the sunhght 

 was seen by Major Skinner near Gebel-el-Orab in the 

 Syrian desert; showing that in either condition of the 

 sun abnormal weather may favour their increase. 



(to be concluded). 



Eigentum von Fritz Rühl's Erben, Zürich. — Redaktion: M. RühL Züricli V. — Fritz Lehmanns Verlag, G. m. b. H., Stuttgart. 



Druck der Sc h eil' sehen ßuchdruckerei, V. Kraemer, Heilbronu. 



