

306 THE INSECT WORLD. 
Mortes, on the Mediterranean coast, 1,518 wheat sacks were filled 
with dead locusts, amounting in weight to 68,861 kilogrammes, and 
at Arles 165. sacks, or 6,600 kilogrammes. » The rewards given 
amounted to 5,542 francs ; but, notwithstanding all this; the follow- 
ing year the locusts caused still greater damage. } 
Locusts are always to be found in Algeria, in the provinces of 
Oran, Bona, Algiers, and Bougia, but they never commit those 
terrible ravages which change cultivated countries into deserts. 
There are in Algeria years of locusts as there are with us years of 
cockroaches, of blight, of caterpillars, &c. These plagues. are 
fortunately rare. The most terrible took place in 1845 and in 1866. 
In the former year a formidable invasion of locusts took place. It | 
tasted five months, from March to July, each day bringing new | 
bands of these devastating insects; and M. Henry Berthoud, | 
then in Algeria, saw a column of them, whose passage began | 
before daylight, and had scarcely ended at four o’clock in the. | 
afternoon. Doctor Guyon, doctor to the army, and corre- | 
spondent of the Institute, addressed to this learned body an 
account of a few peculiarities of this invasion, of which he was | 
a witness. He speaks of a band which passed on the 16th of 
March over the plain of Sebdon, going in the direction of the 
desert of Angard. Their passage lasted three hours. The locusts, 
having found nothing to devour in the desert, came back again, 
and next day made a descent upon the plain of Sebdon, which 
is 30 kilométres long, by 12 to 15 kilométres broad. In four 
hours all the crops were deyoured, and all vegetation destroyed. 
“The locusts,” says the Doctor, “left behind them an infectious 
odour of putrid herbs, produced by their excretions.” 
At Algiers, in the Faubourg Bab-Azoum, they penetrated in 
masses into the barley stores, and there was the greatest difficulty 
in driving them away, great barricades being raised before the 
store-rooms to stop the invasion. In 1845 they penetrated into 
the pits in which the natives preserve their wheat. According 
to the report of the Commandant de la place of Philippeville, 
M. Levaillant, a column of locusts alighted in the country round 
about that town on the 18th of March, 1845, which extended — 
from 30 to 40 centimétres, and the locusts were found heaped upon 
the ground to the height of three décimétres. ‘ 



