IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



15 



houses and bed-chambers, like so many thieves. A day or two 

 after one of these hordes was in motion, others were already 

 hatched to march and glean after them. Having lived near a 

 month in this manner, they arrived at their full growth, and 

 threw off their nympha-state by casting their outward skin. 

 To prepare themselves for this change, they clung by their 

 hinder feet to some bush, twig, or corner of a stone ; and 

 immediately, by using an undulating motion, their heads 

 would first break out, and then the rest of their bodies. The 

 whole transformation was performed in seven or eight minutes, 

 after which they lay for a small time in a torpid and seemingly 

 in a languishing condition ; but as soon as the sun and the air 

 had hardened their wings, by drying up the moisture that 

 remained upon them after casting their sloughs, they reassumed 

 their former voracity, with an addition of strength and agility. 

 Yet they continued not long in this state before they were 

 entirely dispersed." The species Dr. Shaw here speaks of is 

 probably not the Locusta migratoria. 



The old Arabian fable, that they are directed in their flights 

 by a leader or king 1 , has been adopted, but I think without 

 sufficient reason, by several travellers. Thus Benjamin 

 Bullivant, in his " Observations on the Natural History of New 

 England 2 ," says that "the locusts have a kind of regimental 

 discipline, and as it were some commanders, which show greater 

 and more splendid wings than the common ones, and arise first 

 when pursued by the fowls or the feet of the traveller, as I 

 have often seriously remarked." And in like terms Jackson 

 observes, that cc they have a government amongst themselves 

 similar to that of the bees and ants ; and when the ( Sultan 

 Jerraad) king of the locusts rises, the whole body follow him, 

 not one solitary straggler being left behind." 3 But that 

 locusts have leaders, like the bees or ants, distinguished from 

 the rest by the size and splendour of their wings, is a circum- 

 stance that has not yet been established by any satisfactory 

 evidence ; indeed, very strong reasons may be urged against 

 it. The nations of bees and ants, it must be observed, are 



1 Bochart, Hierozoic. ii. 1. 4. c. 2. 460. 



2 In Philos. Trans, for 1698. 3 Jackson's Morocco, 51. 



