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302 THE INSECT WORLD. 
rarely, in England. This species is greenish, with transparent 
elytra of a dirty grey, whitish wings, and pink legs. A second 
species, the Italian Locust, also does a great deal of damage in the 
south. All the species undergo five moults, which take six weeks 
each. The last takes place at the end of the hot weather, towards 
the autumn. 
It is especially in warm climates that they become such 
fearful pests to agriculture. Wherever they alight, they change 
the most fertile country into an arid desert. They are seen coming 
in innumerable bands, which, from afar, have the appearance of 
stormy clouds, even hiding the sun. As far and as wide as the 
eye can reach, the sky is black, and the soil is inundated with 
them. The noise of these millions of wings may be compared 
to the sound of a cataract. When this fearful army alights 
upon the ground, the branches of the trees break, and in a few 
hours, and over an extent of many leagues, all vegetation has 
disappeared, the wheat is gnawed to its very roots, the trees are 
stripped of their leaves. Hverything has been destroyed, gnawed 
down, and devoured. When nothing more is left, the terrible 
host rises, as if in obedience to some given signal, and takes its 
departure, leaving behind it despair and famine. It goes to look 
for fresh food—seeking whom, or rather in this case, what it may 
devour ! 
During the year succeeding that in which a country has been 
devastated by showers of locusts, damage from these insects is the 
less to be feared; for it happens often that after having ravaged 
everything, they die of hunger before the laying season begins. 
But their death becomes the cause of a greater evil. Their 
innumerable carcases, lying in heaps and heated by the sun, are 
not long in entering into a state of putrefaction ; epidemic diseases, 
caused by the poisonous gases emanating from them, soon break 
out, and decimate the populations. These Locusts are bred in 
the deserts of Arabia and Tartary; and the east winds carry 
them into Africa and Europe. Ships in the eastern parts of the 
Mediterranean are sometimes covered with them at a great dis- 
tance from the land. 
It is related in the Bible, in the tenth chapter of Exodus, that 
Jehovah commanded Moses to stretch forth his hand to make 


