302 THE INSECT WORLD. 
rarely, in England. This species is greenish, with transparent 
elytra of a dirty grey, whitish wings, and pink legs. A second 
species, the Italian locust, also does a great deal of damage in the 
south. All the species undergo five moults, which take six weeks 
each. The last takes place at the end of the hot weather, towards 
the autumn. : 
It is especially in warm climates that they become such fearful 
pests to agriculture. Wherever they alight, they change the 
most fertile country into an arid desert. They are seen coming 
in innumerable bands, which, from afar, have the appearance of 
stormy clouds, even hiding the sun. As far and as wide as the 
eye can reach the sky is black, and the soil is inundated with 
them. The noise of these millions of wings may be compared 
to the sound of a cataract. When this fearful army alights 
upon the ground, the branches of the trees break, and in a few 
hours, and over an extent of many leagues, all vegetation has 
disappeared, the wheat is gnawed to its very roots, the trees are 
stripped of their leaves. Everything has been destroyed, gnawed 
down, and devoured. When nothing more is left, the terrible 
host rises, as if in obedience to some given signal, and takes its 
departure, leaving behind it despair and famine. It goes to look - 
for fresh food—seeking whom, or rather in this case, what it may 
devour ! 
During the year succeeding that in which a country has been 
devastated by showers of locusts, damage from these insects is the 
less to be feared ; for it happens often that after having ravaged 
everything, they die of hunger before the laying season begins. 
But their death becomes the cause of a greater evil. ‘Their innu- 
merable carcasses, lying in heaps and heated by the sun, are not 
long in entering into a state of putrefaction ; epidemic disease, 
caused by the poisonous gases emanating from them, soon break 
out, and decimate the populations. ‘These locusts are bred in the 
deserts of Arabia and Tartary, and the east winds carry them into 
Africa and Europe. Ships in the eastern parts of the Mediter- 
ranean are sometimes covered with them at a great distance from 
the land. 
It is related in the Bible, in the tenth chapter of Exodus, that 
Jehovah commanded Moses to stretch forth his hand to make 
