294 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
which seemed literally in motion with them, they proceeded up the road, 
entered at the gateway into the lawn, then crossed the verandah in front 
of the house, and through two gardens until they reached a field laid down 
with English grasses, on which they committed sad havoc. Many of them 
did not stop there, as the whole road from the field to the town was black 
with them. ‘They did not cease migrating for a fortnight, proceeding with 
a quick and almost running motion over every obstacle, whether walls or 
shrubs, &c., and making a sudden halt at noon wherever they chanced to 
be, and reposing in that spot till four the next morning, when they were 
again in motion.! Jt is probable that these caterpillars were in search of 
fresh pasture like others feeding on trees, of which instances are on record 
of a whole army having at once quitted a forest of which they had entirely 
consumed the leaves in quest of another. One of these hosts (as we may 
conclude) is stated by an American newspaper, the Charleston Courier, to 
have availed themselyes in May, 1842, in passing from Richland to the St, 
Mathew’s shore, of a new railway there running over the Cangaree Swamp, 
as a convenient bridge, in such countless swarms that a solid column of 
them filled the railway for upwards of a mile, and actually arrested the 
course of a locomotive drawing a full train of waggons laden with iron, 
though moving with a speed of ten to twelve miles an hour, and which was 
only able to proceed by throwing sand on the fore wheels. 
But of insect emigrants none are ‘more celebrated than the locusts, 
which, when arrived at their perfect state, assemble, as before related, in 
such numbers, as in their flight to intercept the sunbeams, and to darken 
whole countries, passing from one region to another, and laying waste 
kingdom after kingdom; but upon these I have already said much, and 
shall have occasion again to enlarge. The same tendency to: shift their 
quarters has been observed in our little indigenous deyourers, the Aphides. 
Mr. White tells us, that about three o’clock in the afternoon of the Ist of 
August, 1785, the people of the village of Selborne were surprised bya 
shower of Aphides or smother flies, which fell in those parts. Those that 
walked in the street at that juncture found themselves covered with these 
insects, which settled also upon the hedges and in the gardens, blackening 
all the vegetables where they alighted. His annuals were discoloured by 
them, and the stalks of a bed of onions quite coated over for six days after, 
These armies, he observes, were then, no doubt, in a state of emigration, 
and shifting their quarters, and might have come from the great hop planta- 
tions of Kent or Sussex, the wind being all that day in the east. They 
were observed at the same time in great clouds about Farnham, and all 
along the vale from Farnham to Alton.® A similar emigration of these 
flies I once witnessed, to my great annoyance, when travelling later in the 
year, in the Isle of Ely. The air was so full of them, that they were in- 
cessantly flying into my eyes, nostrils, &c., and my clothes were covered 
by them, And in 1814, in the autumn, the Aphides were so abundant for 
a few days in the vicinity of Ipswich, as to be noticed with surprise by the 
most incurious observers; as they were September 26th and 27th, 1836, at 
Hull, where, as the local newspapers stated, such swarms filled the alt 
that it was impossible to walk with comfort from their entering the eyes 
and mouth at every step; and on the same days they were equally numerous 
at York and Derby. 
1 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii, proc. Vi. 2 Nat Hist. ii, 101, 
