8f) REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 
The facts which .ire generally quoted as evidence of their power of 
prolonged flight arc the numerous statements of their having been seen 
at sea a distance of five hundred miles or more from the nearest land 
from which they could have come. We add here one of these state- 
ments as an illustration : 
Locusts at sea. — The Essex (Massachusetts) Register published the following account 
on authority of a letter from the mate of the brig Levant, of Boston, to his friend in 
Beverly, dated Montevideo, January 17, last past. Tho mate writes that after 
having encountered a severe gale on the 13th of September when in latitude of 18° 
north, and tho nearest laud being over 450 miles, they wen: surrounded for two days 
by large swarms of locusts of a large size ; and in the afternoon of the 6econd day in 
a squall from the northwest, the sky was completely black with them. They covered 
every part of the brig immediately, sails, rigging, cabin, &c. It is a little singular 
how they could have supported themselves in the air so long, as there was no land to 
the northwest for several thousand miles. Two days afterwards, the weather being 
moderate, the brig sailed through swarms of them floating dead upon the water. 183 
If these statements are received as true, and some of them at least 
are too well authenticated for us to doubt their correctness, they render 
it certain that it is possible for locusts, under favorable conditions, to 
be conveyed this great distance over the ocean. 
But does it follow as a necessary conclusion that they have flown to 
this distance at a single flight ? If the remarkable statement by Sir 
Hans Sloane, which we have heretofore quoted, is to be relied upon, we 
may be enabled to account for their appearance in mid-ocean without 
having to assume that these points were reached in a single flight. That 
locusts maj 7 fall into the water in such masses as to buoy many without 
being submerged, which may afterwards take flight, is not impossible. 
Lallemant observing a swarm cast into the sea off the shores of Algiers, 
remarked that many thrown upon the beach by the waves regained 
their vitality under the iuflueuce of the sun. The same thing has also 
been frequently observed elsewhere. 
It is also possible for them to be carried long distances over the ocean 
by whirlwinds and by violent winds which ascend on leaving the land, 
the force of which is sufficient to carry them forward in spite of the 
apparent natural tendency they have to drop when over the water. 
We therefore are not inclined to accept these isolated and unusual 
occurrences as applicable to the question now under discussion ; not that 
we deny the possibility of a swarm passing over a distance of 500 
miles in a single flight with a favorable wind, but that the evidence 
to show these were regular flights is wanting, and from the fact, 
which will be hereafter shown, that when they come over large bodies 
of water they have a natural or at least almost universal tendency to fall. 
All the facts, therefore, which we have been able to gather in refer- 
ence to their power of flight lead us to believe that with a strong and 
long-contiuued wind they may pass over a distance of from three to 
five hundred miles, and possibly even more before alighting. The fact 
that they are driven by the wind instead of really flying as does a bird. 
"'Annals of Natural History, vol. vi, page 527. 
