Ixii 
APPENDIX IV. 
that some doubts have been lately expressed respecting the destructive 
powers of this insect by a celebrated foreign traveller. I can, however, 
positively state from my own information, as well as of many persons 
with whom I conversed , that the one here represented, is the only spe- 
cies of insect which commits those dreadful ravages so often recorded 
to have occurred in Abyssinia, and I can also add that, while I resided at 
Bombay, numbers of the same species of locusts were sent down to Mr. 
Duncan from the upper country for the purpose of pointing out the insect 
which had at that time laid waste several extensive tracts of land in the 
interior. ; 
The head and shoulders of this insect are armed with a thick shell or case ; 
that of the head has a leaden grey colour, when alive, interspersed with red ; 
the shoulder plate being of a reddish brown spotted with white, smooth in 
front, and rough on the hinder part ; the eye is bright yellow with three 
black bars across it; feelers or horns black; the wings are of a yellowish- 
brown, lower part tinged with a fine purple, and the whole obscurely dotted 
with black. The legs are externally of a leaden grey colour, the upper 
part shading oiFinto black ; the ribs also deep black, inside of second joint 
bright purple, and the thorns scarlet tipped with black ; the extremities 
being formed of triangular shells formed of two sharp clawg and a knob in 
the centre smooth and round. The body is cased with seven strong plates 
on the back folding over one another, and the same number of a softer con- 
sistency covers the belly ; it has four small feelers depending from the sides 
of the mouth, the two foremost of which have five joints and the hinder three, 
An immense flight of these insects came over to one of the Amphila islands 
while we remained in English Harbour, for an account of which vide p. 17^ 
of this work. 
