ON THE FLIGHT OF LOCUSTS. 
idea of a funeral pall; and as these little animals live only upon dew, they raise anil 
lower themselves continually one upon another to gather it. 
The locusts move but a little space from the place of their birth during the first days 
of their lives, because their legs are always weak, their wings not yet well formed, and 
their teeth not sufficiently hard to eat the herbage. In the course of fifteen to twenty 
days they begin to eat the most tender stalks of the plants, and in proportion as their 
limbs grow stronger they break away from the society of the colony and spread over 
the adjacent fields, intent, day and night, without sleeping, upon devouring whatever 
presents itself to them, while their wings grow to their perfection. It is not to be 
wondered at that they consume the tender, juicy, and sweet plants, like the melons, 
citrons, pumpkins, and other green things, and the leguminous plants, and not less 
the aromatic shrubs, whose perfumes attract them from afar, like the thyme, the mint, 
the rosemary, the sage, the southernwood, which so abound in Spain that in many 
parts they serve to furnish aromatic fires, and in the north they are cultivated as 
choice plants in gardens. What seems strange, they devoured also the mustard plant, 
onions, and garlic, as well as poisonous plants like the Stramonium ferox, the Solarium 
lothale, the hemlock, and other fetid and poisonous plants; in short, the locust con- 
sumes everything, without distinction of llavor, of odor, or of virtue — good or bad. 
The singularity about these locusts, which during four consecutive years desolated 
all the southern provinces of Spain, was a fact notorious to all the world, namely, that 
in the midst of so many plants greedily devoured they never touched the leaves and 
the flowers nor the fruit of the tomato (or love apple), the only privileged plant which, 
was respected by this voracious insect. * * * 
The locusts pass the months of April, May, and June near the place of their birth, 
at the close of which latter month their wings assume a beautiful rose color, and ac- 
quire all the strength and management of which they are capable. They now begin 
to unite in colonies for the second and last flight, and then begins in their youth to 
kindle in them the passion and desire of perpetual ing their species. This is manifested 
in their movements; but it is observed that this ardor is very unequal in the two 
sexes, because the males become restless and solicitous, while the females remain cold 
and occupied continually in feeding. The one approaches, the other flies and hides, 
so that the whole early morning is passed in assaulting on the one part and fleeing aud 
feeding on the other. Toward two o'clock in the afternoon, when the heat of the sun 
has dried all the dampness of the night from their wings, so that they assume their elas- 
ticity, the females begin to free themselves by jumping about, and fly from the impor- 
tunities of the males who pursue them, in which exercise they begin to rise little by 
little into the air, and finally to the height of 400 to 500 feet, forming a cloud which 
intercepts the rays of the sun. The clear and serene sky of Spain is obscured, and 
becomes, in the midst of summer, more dark and gloomy than that of Germany in the 
spring. The rustling of so many millions of wings forms a dull roar similar to that 
which a sudden blast of wind produces in a forest full of trees. The route which the 
first formidable swarm takes always follows the wind, and this first flight is usually 
prolonged about two leagues ; but if the weather is calm and serene the length of t heir 
flight is less. In these fatal pauses the locusts commit the most frightful ravages; 
By their exquisite sensibility to odors, they scent from a great height in the air a held 
of grain or a garden. I have seen them turn from the course of their march more than 
half a league, obliquely, to destroy a fleld of grain, and after they had devoured it rise 
again and resume their first direction which they had left. The destruction is accom- 
plished in an instant. Each insect has four arms and two legs, and all the extremities 
of each of these members have three [two] claws for grappling. I have seen the males 
ascend the branches of the trees on which they feed, as sailors climb by the yards and 
ropes of their ship, cutting off only the most tender of the twigs and letting them fall to 
the earth, so that the females who are below may eat them. I will not venture to say 
what cause influences the males to be so complaisant, since the instinct is not revealed; 
and this gallantry being but ill reciprocated by the ungrateful females, leads the males 
to descend from the shrubs, taking flight and pursuing them. With frequent similar 
pauses they finally come together in some uncultivated ground, when the males give 
vent to their desires, and the females deposit their eggs in the manner already re- 
ferred to. 
What a terrible spectacle it must be for a poor husbandman to look upon his fields 
when these insects have devoured the whole harvest. A countryman of judgment, as 
many are in the regions of Spain, finding himself present with me at such a scene of 
destruction, and seeing his fields left without a stalk of grain, and only with a little 
chaff, exclaimed: "If these accursed females were not so prudish, and if they would 
suffer the males to possess them in the country where they were born, such a calamity 
would not have befallen me ; but the rabble fears death, and strives to prolong its life 
like ourselves because it knows that after uniting nothing remains to it but to lie in 
and die." 
All history and tradition declare that the apparitioti of locusts is a pest which has 
afflicted the southern provinces of Spain from time immemorial; and I remember to 
