THE LOCUST. (Locusta migratoria.)
The Bible, which was written in a country where the Locust made a distinguished figure among natural productions, has given us several very striking images of these animals’ numbers and rapacity. It compares an army to a swarm of locusts: it describes them as rising out of the earth, where they are produced; as pursuing a settled march to destroy the fruits of the earth; and as the frequent instruments of Divine indignation.
The native countries of the Locust are Central Asia and the North of Africa, but they migrate every year to Europe, where they destroy every green thing they meet with. Other species of Locusts are met with in various parts of the world, which, like the true migratory Locust, pass from place to place in vast flocks, causing immense damage wherever they take up their temporary abode.
When the Locusts take the field they have a leader at their head, whose flight they observe, and to whose motions they pay a strict attention. They appear at a distance like a black cloud, which, as it approaches, gathers upon the horizon, and almost hides the light of the day. It often happens that the husbandman sees this imminent calamity pass away without doing him any mischief; and the whole swarm proceed onward, to settle upon the labours of some less fortunate country. But wretched is the district upon which they fix; they ravage the meadow and the corn land; strip the trees of their leaves, and the gardens of their beauty; the visitation of a few minutes destroys the expectations of a year; and a famine but too frequently ensues. In their native climates they are not so injurious as in the south of Europe, for in Syria and Palestine, though the plain and the forest be stripped of their verdure, the power of vegetation is so great, that an interval of three or four days repairs the calamity; but our verdure is the produce of a season; and we must wait till the ensuing spring repairs the damage. Besides, in their long flights to this part of the world, the Locusts are famished by the tediousness of their journey, and are therefore more voracious wherever they happen to settle. But it is not by what they devour that they do so much damage as by what they destroy. Their very bite contaminates the plant, and injures its future vegetation. To use the expression of the husbandman, they burn whatever they touch, and leave the marks of their devastation for two or three years ensuing. And if so noxious while living, they are still more so when dead; for wherever they fall they infect the air in such a manner that the smell is insupportable.
In the year 1690 clouds of Locusts were seen to enter Russia in three different places; and thence to spread themselves over Poland and Lithuania in such astonishing multitudes, that the air was darkened, and the earth covered with their numbers. In some places they were seen lying dead, heaped upon each other to the depth of four feet; in others they covered the surface like a black cloth: the trees bent beneath their weight, and the damage which the country sustained exceeded computation. In Barbary their numbers are formidable, and their visits frequent. In the year 1724 Dr. Shaw was a witness of their devastations in that country. Their first appearance was about the latter end of March, when the wind had been southerly for some time. In the beginning of April their numbers were so much increased, that in the heat of the day they formed themselves into large swarms, which appeared like clouds, and darkened the sun. In the middle of May they began to disappear, retiring into the plains to deposit their eggs. In the next month, being June, the young brood began to make their appearance, forming many compact bodies of several hundred yards square; which, marching forward, climbed the trees, walls, and houses, eating everything that was green in their way: