128 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
their wives.! When they visit a country, says Mr. Jackson, speaking of 
the same empire, it behoves every one to lay in provision for a famine, for 
they stay from three to seven years. When they have devoured all other 
vegetables, they attack the trees, consuming first the leaves and then the 
bark. From Mogador to Tangier, before the plague in 1799, the face of 
the earth was covered by them:—at that time a singular incident oc- 
curred at El Araiche. The whole region from the confines of the Sahara 
was ravaged by them ; but on the other side of the river El Kos not one 
of them was to be seen, though there was nothing to prevent their flying 
over it. Till then they had proceeded northward ; but upon arriving at 
its banks they turned to the east, so that all the country north of El 
Araiche was full of pulse, fruits, and grain — exhibiting a most striking 
contrast to the desolation of the adjoining district. At length they were 
all carried by a violent hurricane into the Western Ocean ; the shore, as 
in former instances, was covered by their carcasses, and a pestilence was 
caused by the horrid stench which they emitted: but when this evil 
ceased, their devastations were followed by a most abundant crop. The 
Avabs of the Desert, “ whose hands are against every man,” ® and who 
rejoice in the evil that befalls other nations, when they behold the clouds 
of locusts proceeding from the north, are filled with gladness, anticipating 
a general mortality, which they call Z/-Khere (the benediction) ; for, 
when a country is thus laid waste, they emerge from their arid deserts and 
pitch their tents in the desolated plains. *— The neighbouring kingdom of 
Spain has often suffered from the ravages of locusts. So recently as 
May, 1841, an article in the Constitutionnel French newspaper states as 
follows: “ Such immense quantities of locusts have appeared this year in 
Spain that they threaten in some places entirely to destroy the crops. At 
Daimiel, in the province of Ciudad-Real, three hundred persons are con- 
stantly employed in collecting these destructive insects, and though they 
destroy seventy or eighty sacks every day, they do not appear to diminish. 
There is something frightful in the appearance of these locusts proceeding 
in divisions, some of which are a league in length and 2000 paces in 
breadth. It is sufficient if these terrible columns stop half an hour on 
any spot, for every thing growing on it—vines, olive-trees, and corn— to 
be entirely destroyed. After they have passed, nothing remains but the 
large branches and the roots, which, being under ground, haye escaped 
their voracity.” And in a late work of travels in the same country we 
find the following passage :—‘ During our ride (from Cordova to Seville), 
we observed a number of men advancing in skirmishing order across the 
country, and thrashing the ground most savagely with long flails. Curious 
to know what could be the motives for this Xerxes-like treatment of the 
earth, we turned out of the road to inspect their operations, and found 
they were driving a swarm of locusts into a wide piece of linen, spread on 
the ground some distance before them, wherein they were made prisoners. 
These animals are about three times the size of an English grasshopper. 
They migrate from Africa, and their spring visits are very destructive ; for- 
in a single night they will entirely eat up a field of corn,’”’4 
1 Southey’s Thalaba, i. 171. 
2 Gen, xvi. 12. 3 Jackson’s Travels in Marocco, 54. 
4 Scott’s Excursions in the Mountains of Ronda and Granada, The same plan is 
adopted for the destruction of these insects in some parts of the United States; 
deep trenches being dug at the end of fields into which the grasshoppers are driven 
with branches, and then destroyed by throwing the earth upon them, 
