INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 213 



office. It is armed with two pair of very strong jaws, 

 the upper terminating in short and the lower in long 

 teeth, by which it can both lacerate and grind its food — 

 its stomach is of extraordinary capacity and powers — its 

 hind legs enable it to leap to a considerable distance, 

 and its ample vans are calculated to catch the wind as 

 sails, and so to carry it sometimes over the sea ; and al- 

 though a single individual can effect but little evil, yet 

 when the entire surface of a country is covered by them, 

 and every one makes bare the spot on which it stands, 

 the mischief produced may be as infinite as their num- 

 bers. So well do the Arabians know their power, that 

 they make a locust say to Mahomet — " We are the 

 army of the Great God ; we produce ninety-nine eggs ; 

 if the hundred were completed, we should consume the 

 whole earth and all that is in it a ." 



Since it is possible you may not have paid particular 

 attention to the accounts given by various authors both 

 ancient and modern, of the almost incredible injury done 

 to the human race by these creatures, I shall now lay 

 before you some of the most striking particulars of their 

 devastations that I have been able to collect. 



The earliest plague of this kind which has been re- 

 corded, appears also to have been the most direful in 

 its immediate effects that ever was inflicted upon any 

 nation. I am speaking, as you may well suppose, of the 

 locusts with which the Egyptian tyrant and his people 

 were visited for their oppression of the Israelites. Only 

 conceive to yourself a country so covered by them that 

 no one can see the face of the ground— a whole land 

 darkened, and all its produce, whether herb or tree, so 

 a Bochartj ubi supr. c, 6. 485. 



