

==ee ee 
a Se tae ee 
Serer = 

308 THE INSECT WORLD. 
fig-trees, and even the olive-trees, in spite of the bitterness of 
their foliage. At Relizane and at L’Habra they attacked the 
cotton-fields. The road, 80 kilométres long, which connects Mos- 
taganem with Mascara, was covered to the whole of its extent. 
In the province of Constantine the locusts appeared almost 
simultaneously, from the Sahara to the sea, and from Bougia to 
La Calle. At Batna, at Setif, at Constantine, at Guelma, at Bona, 
at Philippeville, at Djidjelly, the inhabitants struggled with energy 
against this invasion, but neither fire nor any obstacles opposed 
to the advance of this winged army were able to stop their 
ravages. The French Government, to alleviate as much as pos- 
sible the ruin which was thus brought upon the colony, opened a 
public subscription at the end of the year 1866. 
The negroes of Soudan endeavour to frighten the locusts ‘in 
their flight by savage yells. In Hungary they employed for the 
same object the noise of cannon. In the middle ages, for the 
want of cannon, they exorcised the locusts. A traveller of the 
sixteenth century, the monk Alvarez, relates that he also employed 
exorcisms against an immense host of these destructive insects 
which he met with in Ethiopia. When he perceived them, he made 
the Portuguese and the natives form in procession, and ordered 
them to chant psalms. “Thus chanting,” says he, “we went into 
a country where the corn was, which having reached, I made them 
catch a good many of these locusts, to whom I delivered an 
adjuration, which I carried with me in writing, by me composed 
the preceding night, summoning, admonishing, and excommu- 
nicating them. Then I charged them in three hours’ time to 
depart to the sea, or else to go to the land of the Moors, leaving 
the land of the Christians. On their refusal of which, I adjured 
and convoked all the birds of the air, animals and tempests, to dissi- 
pate, destroy, and devour them; and for this admonition I had a 
certain quantity of these locusts seized, and pronouncing these 
words in their presence, that they might not be ignorant of them, 
I let them go, so that they might tell the rest.” If one reflects 
that on their arrival in the land of the Moors, these same locusts 
were perhaps received by prayers which had for their object to 
send them back to the land of the Christians, they must have 
been very much embarrassed by such contradictory adjurations. 



