92 STATISTICS OF MINNESOTA. 



region (or Barca.) In the summer, he says, they would leave 

 their cattle on the .Mediterranean sea-coast and go up to Augila, 

 sonic distance to the south, to procure locusts and dates. When 

 they 6aught a quantity of them fchey dried them iu the sun, and 



then having ground them to powder they would eat them with 

 milk. Augilah bears the same name at the present day. It is a 

 region of sand hills, with an oasis of the same name near hy. 

 Their repairing to that place to procure them indicates that the 

 locusts were at home there iu the days of Herodotus, more than 



4'<o years before Christ, 



If we pass the Dead Sea into Asia we find Arabia only Africa 

 over again on a smaller scale, so far as the locust is concerned. 

 It has the credit of being the source of supply for all the neigh- 

 boring countries round about it., Africa not excepted. 



Tristram says : The locusts of Egypt always came into that 

 country from the East, and into Syria from the East and South- 

 East, heing in fact nurtured in the wilds of Arabia. "When it 

 was morning the East wind brought the locust." "The locusts 

 always come with the wind from the country of their origin, and 

 this, as all observers attest, is with a south and southwest wind 

 into Persia, and with an east wind into Egypt. Those that deso- 

 late Southeast Europe come with a north and northeast wind from 

 the Ukraine." From these extracts it might be inferred that the 

 locusts of Egypt. Palestine. Syria and Persia, all have their home 

 and origin in Central Arabia. Nor do I remember anything 

 directly contradictory to this, except that the Arabians sometimes 

 say their own locust comes from beyond the Persian Gulf to the 

 cast of them. Though the subject of origin is the one I am at 

 present investigating, I desire to call attention to the agency of 

 the winds noticed by this author. ''The locush (thn/i/s come with 



the winds front the cowXtry <>/' their origin." A very pregnant and 

 suggestive sentence in connection with the example given I 

 doubt whether there is any part of the researches on the subject 

 likely to be more fruitful in results than those derived from the 

 thermometer and the weather-vane. Suppose we know that they 

 have had two hot. dry seasons along the mountains west and north- 

 west of us, and the prevailing winds the following July and August 

 should be from the west, what bearing would such a coincidence 

 have upon the locust question in Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas ! 

 In Asia they abound to a greater or less extent all along and 

 below the great east and west ranges of mountains from Asia 

 .Minor on the western side, to the island of Formosa in the Eastern 

 Pacific Ocean : that is to say, over one-fourth the entire ciivum- 



