214 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN, 
sky for miles and devouring every green thing upon 
their road 
Onward they come, a dark continuous cloud 
Of congregated myriads, numberless. 
The rushing of whose wings is as the sound 
Of a broad river headlong in its course, 
Plunged from a mountain summit, or the roar 
Of a wild ocean in the autumn storm, 
Shattering its billows on a shore of rocks ; 
and as they move they leave desolation behind them. 
Every leaf on tree and bush, every blade of grass, 
every ear of corn, vanishes under their attacks. In 
1866 in Algeria they not only destroyed the vege- 
tables, fig-trees, vines, and olives, but fell into the 
canals and brooks in such numbers, that the stench 
became horrible, and the French troops were called 
out to destroy them and collect their bodies in heaps 
to burn them ; and similar locust plagues cause great 
devastation in America. 
These locusts put their eggs into the earth and 
cover them up, and the young locusts come out ready 
at once to begin eating, and exactly like the mother 
only without wings, which appear later when the last 
loose skin is cast off. Our little green grasshoppers 
are locusts with short antennae, and drop their eggs 
in this way, but crickets and true grasshoppers, of 
which our large green grasshopper (Fig. 72) is one, 
have a very curious and interesting implement for 
laying their eggs in the earth safe from harm. The 
mother has a pointed egg-laying sheath or ovipositor 
(o, Fig. 72), at the end of her body, made of several 
thin plates touching at the edges, and with this she 
bores a hole in the ground, and then opening the 
sheath drops egg after egg in to lie till next spring, 
