In the southern parts of France, M. Latrielle informs us, the children are very fond of the fleshy thighs of Locusts.[426]
The Arabs believe the Locusts have a government among themselves similar to that of the bees and ants; and when “Sultan Jeraad,” King of the Locusts, rises, the whole mass follow him, and not a solitary straggler is left behind to witness the devastation. Mr. Jackson himself evidently believed this from the manner he has narrated it.[427] An Arab once asserted to this gentleman, that he himself had seen the great “Sultan Jeraad,” and described his lordship as being larger and more beautifully colored than the ordinary Locust.[428]
Capt. Riley also mentions that each flight of Locusts is said to have a king which directs its movements with great regularity.[429]
The Chinese believe the same, and affirm that this leader is the largest individual of the whole swarm.[430]
Benjamin Bullifant, in his observations on the Natural History of New England, says: “The Locusts have a kind of regimental discipline, and as it were commanders, which show greater and more splendid wings than the common ones, and arise first when pursued by fowls, or the feet of a traveler, as I have often seriously remarked.”[431]
The truth, however, is found in the Bible. They have no king.[432]
The Saharawans, or Arabs of the desert, “whose hands are against every man,”[433] and who rejoice in the evil that befalls other nations, when they behold the clouds of Locusts proceeding toward the north are filled with the greatest gladness, anticipating a general mortality, which they call El-khere, the good, or the benediction; for, when Barbary is thus laid waste, they emerge from their arid recesses in the desert and pitch their tents in the desolated plains.[434]
Pausanias tells us, that in the temple of Parthenon there was a brazen statue of Apollo, by the hand of Phidias, which was called Parnopius, out of gratitude for that god having once banished from that country the Locusts, which greatly injured the land. The same author asserts that he himself has known the Locusts to have been thrice destroyed by Apollo in the Mountain Lipylus, once exterminating them by a violent wind; at another time by vehement heat; and the third time by unexpected cold.[435]
At a time when there were great swarms of Locusts in China, as we learn from Navarette, the Emperor went out into his gardens, and taking up some of these insects in his hands, thus spoke to them: The people maintain themselves on wheat, rice, etc., you come to devour and destroy it, without leaving anything behind; it were better you should devour my bowels than the food of my subjects. Having concluded his speech, the monarch was about to put them in a fair way of “devouring his bowels” by swallowing them, when some that stood by telling him they were venomous,
he nobly answered, “I value not my life when it is for the good of my subjects and people to lose it,” and immediately swallowed the insects. History tells us the Locusts that very moment took wing, and went off without doing any more damage; but whether or not the heroic Emperor recovered leaves us in ignorance.[436]