216 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



which entered Transylvania in August, was several hun- 

 dred fathoms in width, (at Vienna the breadth of one of 

 them was three miles,) and extended to so great a length 

 as to be four hours in passing over the Red Tower; and 

 such was its density that it totally intercepted the solar 

 light, so that when they flew low one person could not see 

 another at the distance of twenty paces a . A similar ac- 

 count has been given me by a friend of mine b long resi- 

 dent in India. He relates that when at Poonah he was 

 witness to an immense army of locusts which ravaged the 

 Mahratta country, and was supposed to come from Arabia 

 (this, if correct, is a strong proof of their power to pass 

 the sea under favourable circumstances). The column 

 they composed, my friend was informed, extended five 

 hundred miles; and so compact was it, when on the wing, 

 that like an eclipse it completely hid the sun, so that no 

 shadow was cast by any object, and some lofty tombs di- 

 stant from his residence not more than two hundred yards 

 were rendered quite invisible. This was not the Gryllus 

 migratorius, L., but a red species; which circumstance 

 much increased the horror of the scene; for, clustering 

 upon the trees after they had stripped them of their foli- 

 age, they imparted to them a sanguine hue. The peach 

 was the last tree that they touched. 



Dr. Clarke, to give some idea of the infinite numbers 

 of these animals, compares them to a flight of snow when 

 the flakes are carried obliquely by the wind. They co- 

 vered his carriage and horses, and the Tartars assert that 

 people are sometimes suffocated by them. The whole 

 lace of nature might have been described as covered by a 



11 Philos. Trans, xlvi. 30. b Major Moor, author of The Nar- 



rative of Captain Little's Detachment, The Hindu Pantheon, &c 



