LOCUSTS IN NORTHERN AFRICA. 
49 
Western Ocean by a violent hurricane, and the shores were covered with their dead 
bodies. 
He says that when the locust is young it is green ; as it grows it as- 
sumes a yellow hue, and lastly becomes brown. The figure given in 
this edition, plate 3, is very poor ; but the thorax shows that it is an 
Aeridium, and about three inches long. 
According to Shaw the locusts in 1724 began to gather in Barbary 
after a south wind had been some time blowing. Toward the middle of 
April they had so multiplied that they formed immense clouds, darken- 
ing the suu. About the middle of May, when about to deposit their 
eggs, they began to move backwards into the plains of Metidja and 
other adjoining regions, and when the young were fully grown they be- 
came more ravenous and swifter in flight than before. Yet this condi- 
tion lasted not long, when they scattered themselves and laid their eggs ; 
as, moreover, their flight and progress came always from the north (?) so 
it is probable that they found their death in the sea. 109 Morocco and 
Taflete are often visited by locust swarms which come in great flocks 
from the south ; they often appear two or three times in the course of 
the year, and their flights are frequently followed by famine, and this 
by pestilence. 110 
On the 23d of September, 1761, Forskal observed a swarm come down 
in Cairo. The swarm was composed of the species he termed Gryllus 
gregarius (undoubtedly A. peregrinum). ni He saw them again in Jan- 
uary, 1702, flying over the Libyan desert with the southwest wind ; and 
in November, 1762, Niebukr observed them (?) again on his journey from 
the Arabian Gulf to Djedda, where they came up with the wind out of 
the west, across the Gulf, and continued their flight toward the east. 112 
Browne observed them in Darfur. 113 Light met with them on the 11th 
of May, 1814, in destructive swarms at the entrance into Nubia, going 
up the Nile from Egypt, near the island of Phila. 114 
Burkhardt 1 ' 5 mentions finding them at Tacazze, in Nubia, and also at 
the same time in Belad al Taka, in Lower Mareb, which he calls their 
peculiar brooding-place, from whence they issue iu destructive migrating 
swarms and lay waste the fields and pastures of Nubia. 
In 1813 they devoured everything in the country of the blacks from 
Besber up to Shendy. Burkhardt affirms that the locusts are at home 
in the whole district of the Nile from Egypt to Sennaar, and in all the 
Nubian desert ; that all the swarms which he saw in Upper Egypt came 
from the north, and that the Nubians declared they came from Upper 
Egypt to them UG . 
109 " Travels in Barbary and the Levant."— French Transl. of la Haye, i, 331.— Kefersteln. 
110 Host, "Moroco,"p. 300.— Ritter. 
111 "Descriptiones aninialium qua! in itiuere orientali Observata, Forscal" p. 81. 
m Beschreibung von Arabien 168.— Kefferstein. 
'"Travels, 226.— Ritter. 
114 Light, Travels in Egypt, p. 56. 
»« Travels in Nubia, 391. 
116 Ritter Heuschrecken plage der Alten Welt, p. 19-23.— Keffenstein, 1. c. 
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