<)(> STATISTICS OF MINNESOTA. 



favorite home of the locusts. Within its compass, and in its 

 tropical heat, are found the exact conditions in which it best 

 thrives. 



From year to year, and from age to age, her mountain ranges 

 and bordering deserts have been the perpetually procreant hatch- 

 ing-beds of hungry hosts, that have not only ravaged her own 

 borders, but some of the fairest portions of southern Europe and 

 the neighboring islands of the sea. For here, if many writers are 

 to be credited, were engendered the parent stork that colonized 

 Portugal, Estermadura, Andalusia, NEurcia, Valencia and Catalonia 

 in Spain, Provence and (janguedoc in France, the kingdom of the 

 Two Sicilies, and the valleys of the Po in Italy. 



If we are to believe the reports of seamen, they have been seen 

 HOC or 400 miles out at sea off Cape Blanco, and one instance is 

 recorded of their having been seen 300 leagues to the windward of 

 Barbadoes, which would be more than 2,000 miles from Africa, 

 and 900 miles from the West Tudia Islands. 



1 must confess to serious doubts as to the authenticity of this 

 last statement, which doubt is noi allayed by another story, 

 told by the same narrator (Sir Hans Sloane), which I give as a 

 curiosity: 



•'In 1649," he says, "the locust destroyed all the products of 

 the island of Teneriffe. They came from the coast of Barbary, 

 the wind being a Levant thence. They flew as far as they could, 

 then one alighted in the sea and another on it, so that one after 

 another made aheap as big as the greatest ship above water, and 

 were esteemed almost as many under as those above the water. Xext 

 dav. after the sun's refreshing them, they took flight again and came 

 in clouds to the island, whence the inhabitants had perceived them 

 in the air." He says they gather together 7,000 or 8,000 soldiers 

 to tight them: "then the ecclesiastics took them in hand by pen- 

 ances, etc. But all would not do; the locusts stayed their four 

 months. The cattle eat them and died; so did several men, and 

 others stuck out in blotches. The other Canary islands were so 

 troubled, also, that they were forced to bury their provisions. 

 They were troubled forty years before with the like calamity." 



I find a more credible account in an extract from a letter of the 

 mate of the brig Levant, of Boston, who writes : "That, after 

 having encountered a severe gale on the 13th of September, 1835b 

 in lat. 18^ north, and the nearest land being 150 miles, they were 

 surrounded for two days by large swarms of locusts of a large size, 

 and in the afternoon of the second day the sky was completely 

 black with them. They covered every part of the brig inline- 



