TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
Ill 
country use their legs and thighs for saws, after they are properly dried ! 
Pliny mentions, at the same time, their flight across the sea, over 
which they are carried by the wind, and where they usually fall, and 
perish in heaps ; although this is not always of necessity the case, as 
early writers (he says) have remarked, because their wings are wet 
with the dew ; for they have been known to pass over extensive 
tracts of sea, and will continue their flight for many days without 
rest. Locusts, he adds, are gifted with the power of foreseeing 
an approaching famine, and will take the precaution, on such an 
occasion, of transporting themselves into distant countries. He men- 
tions also the noise which they make with their wings, and that 
they are sometimes mistaken for flights of strange birds : that they 
darken the sun in their flight, as if a heavy cloud had passed before 
it, and spread terror and consternation wherever they make their 
appearance ; eating up everything which comes in their way, and 
even gnawing the very doors of the houses. Italy, on this writer’s 
authority, was so much infested with locusts from the opposite shores 
of Africa, that the people of Kome, alarmed at the idea of their 
producing a famine, had been often obliged to consult the books of 
the Sibyls, to discover by what means they might avert the wrath 
of the gods which they considered to be falling upon them. He 
teUs us that in the Cyrenaica there existed a law, olsliging the in- 
habitants, every third year, to wage a regular war with the locusts : 
on such occasions they were ordered to seek out their nests, to 
destroy the eggs and the young, and afterwards to proceed to 
extirpate such as had already come to maturity. 
