THE LOCUST. 
293 
numbers and rapacity. It compares an army, where the 
numbers are almost infinite, to a swarm of locusts; it de- 
scribes them as rising out of the earth, wheie they are pro- 
duced ; as pursuing a settled march to destroy the fruits of 
the earth, and co-operate with divine indignation. 
When the locusts take the held, as we are assured, they 
have a leader at their head, whose flight they observe, and 
pay a strict attention to all his motions. They appear at a 
distance, like a black cloud, which, as it approaches, gathers 
upon the horizon, and almost hides the light of the day. It 
often happens, that the husbandman sees this imminent cala- 
mity pass away without doing him any mischief; and the 
whole swarm proceed onward to settle upon the labours of 
some less fortunate country. But wretched is the district upon 
which they settle: they ravage the meadow and the pasture 
ground ; strip the trees of their leaves, and the garden of its 
beauty ; the visitation of a few minutes destroys the expec- 
tations of a year; and a famine but too frequently ensues. 
In their native tropical climates, they are not so dreadful as 
in the southern parts of Europe. There, though the plain 
and the forest be stripped of their verdure, the power of ve- 
getation is so great, that an interval of three or four days re- 
pairs the calamity ; but our verdure is the livery of a season ; 
and we must wait till the ensuing spring repairs the damage. 
Besides, in their long flights to this part of the world, they are 
famished by the tediousness of their journey, and are therefore 
more voracious wherever they happen to settle. But it is not 
by what they devour that they do so much damage as by what 
they destroy. Their very bite is thought to contaminate the 
plant, and to prevent its vegetation. To use the expression 
of the husbandman, they burn whatever they touch; and 
leave the marks of their devastation for two or three years en- 
suing. But if they be noxious while living, they are still 
more so when dead ; for wherever they fall, they infect the 
a ir in such a manner, that the smell is insupportable. 
Orosius tells us, that in the year of the world .‘.SCO, there 
Was an incredible number of locusts which infected Africa; 
and, after having eaten up every thing that was green, they 
dew off, anti were drowned in the African sea ; where they 
caused such a stench, that the putrefying bodies of hundreds 
°f thousands of men could not equal it. 
In the year 1690, a cloud of locusts was seen to enter 
Russia in three different places ; and thence to spread them- 
selves over Poland and Lithunia, in such astonishing multi- 
tudes, that the air was darkened, and the earth covered with 
their numbers. In some places they were seen lying dead 
