100 
LOCUSTS. 
or were driven into other countries. It was during their stay that they 
showed themselves to be the real plague described in Exodus. They 
seemed to march in regular battalions, crawling over every thing that 
lay in their passage, in one straight front. They entered the inmost 
recesses of the houses, were found in every corner, stuck to our clothes, 
and infested our food. It is an extraordinary circumstance, that the 
barn door fowls eat them before they were quite full grown ; and that 
when such was the case, the yoke of the eggs which the hens laid was 
of a dark reddish colour, partaking of that of the locust. The locusts 
lay their eggs in the autumn, which they do frequently before they take 
their flight. Sometimes they deposit them in countries where they 
alight after their flight; gestation and generation going on during 
their excursion : for even on the wing the male and female locust are 
frequently found together. r 
The husbandmen and vine-dressers knew whether eggs had been de¬ 
posited by them, and were most active in discovering them. Some¬ 
times it would happen that none had been deposited at one village, 
whilst they were found at the next, and they calculated their harvests 
and vintages accordingly. The operation of the female locust in laying 
her eggs is highly interesting. She chooses a piece of light earth, well 
protected by a bush or hedge, where she makes a hole for herself, so 
deep that her head just appears above it. She here deposits an oblong 
substance, exactly the shape of her own body, which contains a consi¬ 
derable number of eggs, arranged in neat order, in rows against each 
other, which remain buried in the ground most carefully, and arti¬ 
ficially protected from the cold of winter.^ When that is over, several 
male locusts surround and kill her.f 
The eggs are brought into life by the heat of the sun. If the heats 
-i* Hae pariunt, interram demisso spinae caule, ova condensa, autuinni tempore. Ea 
durant hyeme sub terra.— Plin. lib. xi. cap. 29. 
f This account confirms Pliny, except in the very extraordinary circumstance of the kill¬ 
ing of the female by the male, which I myself never saw, but have heard from such very 
indubitable eye-witnesses, that I fully credit it. 
