110 
JOURNEY FROM 
much as they received their name from thence.” — He further adds — 
“ The ax^ihg, which St. John the Baptist fed upon in the wilder- 
ness, were properly locusts ; and provided they appeared in the holy 
land during the spring, as they did in Barbary, it may be presumed 
that St. John entered upon his mission, and that the da^ of his 
sheicing himself unto Israel (Luke i. 20) was at that season 
Pliny has informed us that the locusts lay their eggs in autumn, 
which remain all the winter in the fissures of the earth, and come 
forth in the shape of locusts in the following spring ; being, at first, 
without legs, and obliged to creep upon their wings. He tells us 
that they invaribly choose tracts of level country in which to deposit 
their eggs, as being most full of crevices and fissures, and hence, if it 
chance to be a rainy season, the eggs never come to perfection ; 
but, on the contrary, if the early part of the year should be dry, vast 
numbers of these insects may be expected in the summer ensuing. 
Some writers (he adds) are of opinion that locusts breed ticice in the 
year, and that they perish as often ; the first supply dying in the heat 
of the summer, and the second immediately succeeding them. The 
mothers die as soon as they have brought forth their young, by reason 
of a small worm which breeds about the throat, and ultimately chokes 
them. The same author informs us that it is said there are locusts in 
India so much as three feet in length ; and that the people of the 
* The time when we observed the swarm of locusts alluded to above, was In the 
latter end of November ; their course, as Dr. Shaw has remarked, was, however, inva- 
riably towards the sea, in which myriads of them were lost ; and we have never seen a 
single instance, on other occasions, where they did not take that direction, however far 
they might have been inland. 
