194 Destructive Power of Locusts. [CHAP. XI. 
do not vouch for the fact; it is no story of mine. Pliny 
tells it; and from him we have it. Some found in the sea 
at Aberdeen were offered there for sale as ‘ fleein’-fish,’ and 
no less a sum than ten shillings was sought for them. 
Strange sort of flying-fish this! Truly it may have been 
said that the entomological and ichthyological school-mas- 
ters were both abroad in those days. It may, however, 
be remarked that something of a similar kind took place 
among ourselves not very long ago, so that we have little 
room to laugh at the Aberdonians. A person having 
picked up a galerite (a species of fossilized sea-urchin of 
the cretaceous system), near by our harbor, was showing it 
to some individuals, when one of them, no doubt puzzled, 
said, ‘Oh! it’s just something that somebody has made.’ 
But to return to the locusts. Those of which we have 
been speaking arrived in the month of August and the be- 
ginning of September. Now, this year it would appear 
that something of the same kind had taken place, as num- 
bers have been picked up in various parts of the country. 
Three have, at least, been found with us, viz., two near the 
Moss of Banff, and one at Cornhill; another at Mintlaw, 
Aberdeenshire. I have also one from Lerwick, where it is 
said they have been rather plentiful in the corn-fields; as 
also in the Zetland Islands, in Unst, and the rest of the bare 
and isolated Skerries. In some of the Western isles, I be- 
lieve, they have actually proved a complete pest. 
“As may be expected, there are many species of this 
creature, as there are of every thing else; but those here 
alluded to are perhaps the most redoubtable of them all, 
as being the most destructive, the best known from their 
migratorial flights, and being, as already hinted, the species 
that constituted one of the awful plagues of Egypt in the 
days of Moses. They were doubtless the same that wasted 
the land of Canaan, and caused such a terrible famine, of 
which we read in the book of Joel. A wind drove them 
into the sea; their dead bodies were again cast on shore in 
