306 THE INSECT WORLD. 
Mortes, on the Mediterranean coast, 1,518 wheat sacks were filled 
with dead locusts, amounting in weight to 68,861 kilogrammes, 
and at Arles 165 sacks, or 6,600 kilogrammes. The rewards 
given amounted to 5,542 frances; but, notwithstanding all this, the 
following year the locusts caused still greater damage. 
Locusts are always to be found in Algeria, in the provinces of 
Oran, Bona, Algiers, and Bougia, but they never commit those . 
terrible ravages which change cultivated countries into deserts. 
There are in Algeria years of locusts as there are with us years of 
cockroaches, of blight, of caterpillars, &. These plagues are 
fortunately rare. The most terrible took place in 1845 and in 1866. 
In the former year a formidable invasion of locusts took place. It 
lasted five months, from March to July, each day bringing new 
bands of these devastating insects: and M. Henry Berthoud, 
then in Algeria, saw a column of them, whose passage began 
before daylight, and had scarcely ended at four o’clock in the 
afternoon. Dr. Guyon, doctor to the army, and correspondent 
of the Institute, addressed to this learned body an account of a 
few peculiarities of this invasion, of which he was a witness. He 
speaks of a band which passed on the 16th of March over the 
plain of Sebdon, going in the direction of the desert of Angard. 
Their passage lasted three hours. The locusts, having found 
nothing to devour in the desert, came back again, and next day 
made a descent upon the plain of Sebdon, which is 30 kilométres 
long, by 12 to 15 kilométres broad. In four hours all the crops 
were devoured, and all vegetation destroyed. ‘‘ The locusts,” says 
the Doctor, ‘left behind them an infectious odour of putrid herbs, 
produced by their excretions.” 
At Algiers, in the Faubourg Bab-Azoum, they penetrated in 
masses into the barley stores, and there was the greatest difficulty 
in driving them away, great barricades being raised before the 
store-rooms to stop the invasion. In 1845 they penetrated into 
the pits in which the natives preserve their wheat. According 
to the report of the Commandant de la place of Philippeville, 
M. Levaillant, a column of locusts alighted in the country round 
about that town.on the 18th of March, 1845, which extended from 
30 to 40 centimetres, and the locusts were found heaped upon the 
eround to the height of three décimétres, 
