35 
PLINX'S NATUEAL HISTOEY. 
[Book XI. 
their places : according to some, it is at the setting ^ of 
Arcturus that the second litter is produced. That the mothers 
die the moment they have brotght forth, is a well-known fact, 
for a little worm immediately grows about the throat, which 
chokes them : at the same time, too, the males perish as well. 
This insect, which thus dies through a cause apparently so 
trifling, is able to kill a serpent by itself, when it pleases, by 
seizing its jaws with its teeth.^^ Locusts are only produced in 
champaign places, that are full of chinks and crannies. In 
India, it is said that they attain the length of three feet, and 
that the people dry the legs and thighs, and use them for saws. 
There is another mode, also, in which these creatures perish ; 
the winds carry them off in vast swarms, upon which they fall 
into the sea or standing waters, and not, as the ancients sup- 
posed, because their wings have been drenched by the damp- 
ness of the night. The same authors have also stated, that 
they are unable to fly during the night, in consequence of the 
cold, being ignorant of the fact, that they travel over lengthened 
tracts of sea for many days together, a thing the more to be won- 
dered at, as they have to endure hunger all the time as well, for 
this it is which causes them to be thus seeking pastures in other 
lands. This is looked upon as a plague^^ inflicted by the anger 
of the gods ; for as they fly they appear to be larger than they 
really are, while they make such a loud noise with their wings, 
that they might be readily supposed to be winged creatures of 
quite another species. Their numbers, too, are so vast, that they 
quite darken the sun ; while the people below are anxiously 
following them with the eye, to see if they are about to make 
a descent, and so cover their lands. After all, they have 
the requisite energies for their flight ; and, as though it had 
been but a trifling matter to pass over the seas, they cross im- 
mense tracts of country, and cover them in clouds which bode 
destruction to the harvests. Scorching numerous objects by 
their very contact, they eat away everything with their teeth, 
the very doors of the houses even. 
26 11th May. 
29 Cuvier treats this story as purely imaginary. 
^ Cuvier says that some have been known nearly a foot long, but not 
more. 
31 He alludes to the ravages committed by the swarms of the migratory 
locust, Grillus migratorius of Linnaeus. 
