186 



INDIEECT INJUEIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



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 numbers. 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."i 



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 recorded, 

 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 devoured that not the least vestige 

 of green is left in either.^ But it is not necessary for me to 

 enlarge further upon a history, the circumstances of which 

 are so well known to you. 



To this species of devastation Africa in general seems 

 always to have been peculiarly subject. This may be 

 gathered from the law in Cyrenaica, mentioned by Pliny, by 

 which the inhabitants were enjoined to destroy the locusts in 

 three different states, three times in the year — first their 

 eggs, then their young, and lastly the perfect insect.^ And 

 not without reason Avas such a law enacted ; for Orosius tells 

 us that in the year of the world 3800, Africa was infested by 

 such infinite myriads of these animals, that having devoured 



1 Bochart, uhi supr. c. 6. 485. 2 Exod. x. 5. 14, 15. 



3 Hist. Nat. 1. xi, c. 29. A similar law was enacted in Lemnos, by which 



every one was compelled to l)ring a certain ineasure of locusts annually to the 

 magistrates. Plin. ibid. 



