28 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 



•gregarious, wandering caterpillars aa palmer- worms ; and so the English translators 

 found a word ready coined and well fitted to represent guzani, the " waster,'' in kampe, 

 the " scuffler." 



It is surprising what unsatisfactory definitions of such words as palmer-worm are 

 given even in dictionaries of some note. In the " Dictionarium Brittanicum of N. 

 Baily (' Philologus ')," printed by J. Cox in MDCCXXX, we find " Palmer- worm, a 

 caterpillar with many feet." How many feet? Philologus seems to have thought that 

 •caterpillars had an indefinite number of such appendages. He evidently was not an 

 entomologist. In " Reid's Etymological Dictionary " the explanation of palmer-worm 

 is a worm covered with hair. What a wide field does this present for the student of 

 .unguages to speculate in ! He might say, Does the explanation denote a lizard, like 

 tne " slow-worm {Anguis fragilis)," but having a hirsute covering, or a serpent, like 

 the "pretty worm of Nilus " that ''kills and pains not,"* or a true worm belonging to 

 the Entozoa or the Lumbrici 1 



Perhaps the simplest accurate definition that can be given to " palmer- worm " is 

 -a wandering and destructive larva. This would tally both with the English word and 

 the original. 



T~Z: That locusts should abound in Palestine was natural. The inhabitants were a 

 pastoral people. Around the cities were small tracts of cultivated land, but the country 

 at large was wilderness. In the undisturbed soil the locusts would deposit their eggs 

 in safety, and their progeny would grow and increase. The Francolin or Red Part- 

 ridge might devour some of them ; and dwellers in the wilderness like St. John the 

 Baptist might make of them their bread, sweetening it with " honey out of the stony 

 rock " ; some of the insects might even be taken as delicacies for the feasts of kings, 

 for in the British Museum is a sculptured scene of feasting brought from Nineveh, 

 in which attendants are bearing locusts strung upon sticks in the manner that small 

 birds were served in later times at the banquets of the Norman nobles. But such 

 inroads would make but little impression upon their hosts, and at length they would 

 arise in their strength — God's great army — directed by Him " who maketh the clouds 

 His chariot and walketh upon the wings of the wind."f 



Many stories are told of calamities brought by locusts. These are specimens, and 

 they have a bearing upon what has already been said : 



" From 1778 to 1780 the whole empire of Morocco was so laid waste by swarms 

 •of these insects that a dreadful famine ensued. ' Mr. Barrow, in his travels, states 

 that in the southern parts of Africa the whole surface of the ground might literally 

 be said to be covered with them for an area of nearly 2,000 square miles. "When 

 driven into the sea by a north-west wind, they formed upon the shore, for fifty miles, 

 .a bank three or four feet high ; and when the wind was south east the stench was 

 such as to be smelt at the distance of 150 miles. Major Moore observed at Poonah 

 -an army of locusts which devastated the whole country of the Mahrattas, and most 

 likely came from Arabia. Their columns extended in a width of five hundred miles 

 and were so dense as to darken the light of the sun. It was a red species (not the 

 -common Gryllus migratorius), whose bloody color added to the terror of their appear- 

 ance."— The Polar and Tropical Worlds, p. 589. 



But no merely human account can approach the sublimity of the inspired de- 

 Beription of a flight of locusts given by the prophet Joel — a description marvellous for 

 -.the, richness of its sustained metaphor and the splendor of its hyperbole. 



The prophet sounds the alarm : , 



• "Joel II. : 1. Blow ye fch-s trumpet in Sion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain : Let 

 till the inhabitants of the land tremble : for the day of the Lord eometh : for it is nigh at hand. 



•2. A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the 

 morning spread upon the mountains : a great people and a strong : there hath not been ever the 

 ]ike, neither shall be any. more after it, even to the years of many generations. 



' Antony and Cleopatra, Act V., Scene II. tPsalm CIV., 3. 



