THE LOCUST. 
291 
Although, as I have said, birds do not frequent the deeper 
recesses of the wood,* jet a very large proportion of them 
build their nests in trees, and find in their foliage and 
branches a secure retreat from the inclemencies of the seasons 
and the pursuit of the reptiles and quadrupeds which prey 
upon them. The borders of the forests are vocal with song; 
and when the gray morning calls the creeping things of the 
earth out of their night cells, it summons from the neighboring 
wood legions of their winged enemies, which swoop down 
upon the fields to save man’s harvests by devouring the de¬ 
stroying worm, and surprising the lagging beetle in his tardy 
retreat to the dark cover where he lurks through the hours of 
daylight. 
The insects most injurious to rural industry do not multi¬ 
ply in or near the woods. The locust, which ravages the East 
with its voracious armies, is bred in vast open plains which 
admit the full heat of the sun to hasten the hatching of the 
eggs, gather no moisture to destroy them, and harbor no bird 
to feed upon the larvse.f It is only since the felling of the 
forests of Asia Minor and Gyrene that the locust has become 
so fearfully destructive in those countries; and the grasshop¬ 
per, which now threatens to be almost as great a pest to the 
agriculture of some North American soils, breeds in seriously 
wearisome, and serveth to temper and mortify over-joyousness of thought. 
* * * In sum it is a very wild, wherein the wildness of human pride 
doth grow tame .”—Elire der Crain , i, p. 136, b. 
* Valvasor says, in the same paragraph from which I have just quoted, 
“ In my many journeys through this valley, I did never have sight of so 
much as a single bird.” 
f Smela, in the government of Kiew, has, for some years, not suffered 
at all from the locusts, which formerly came every year in vast swarms, 
and the curculio, so injurious to the turnip crops, is less destructive there 
than in other parts of the province. This improvement is owing partly to 
the more thorough cultivation of the soil, partly to the groves which are 
interspersed among the plough lands. * * * When in the midst of the 
plains woods shall be planted and filled with insectivorous birds, the locusts 
will cease to be a plague and a terror to the farmer.— Rentzsoh, Der Wald, 
pp. 45, 46. 
