Having now conducted you round and exhibited to you the melancholy proofs of the universal dominion of insects over our vegetable treasures, while growing or endued with the principle of vitality, in their separate departments,—I must next introduce you to a pest worse than all put together, which indiscriminately attacks and destroys every vegetable substance that the earth produces, and which, wherever it prevails, carries famine, pestilence and death in its train. Happily for this country—and we cannot be too thankful for the privilege, we know this scourge of nations only by report. The name of Locust, which has been such a sound of horror in other countries, here only suggests an object of interesting inquiry. But the ravages of locusts are so copious a theme that they merit to be considered in a separate letter.
I am, &c.
[LETTER VII.]
INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS.
INDIRECT INJURIES CONTINUED.
To look at a locust in a cabinet of insects, you would not, at first sight, deem it capable of being the source of so much evil to mankind as stands on record against it. "This is but a small creature," you would say, "and the mischief which it causes cannot be far beyond the proportion of its bulk. The locusts so celebrated in history must surely be of the Indian kind mentioned by Pliny, which were three feet in length, with legs so strong that the women used them as saws. I see indeed some resemblance to the horse's head, but where are the eyes of the elephant, the neck of the bull, the horns of the stag, the chest of the lion, the belly of the scorpion, the wings of the eagle, the thighs of the camel, the legs of the ostrich, and the tail of the serpent, all of which the Arabians mention as attributes of this widely dreaded insect destroyer[377]; but of which in the insect before me I discern little or no likeness?" Yet, although this animal be not very tremendous for its size, nor very terrific in its appearance, it is the very same whose ravages have been the theme of naturalists and historians in all ages, and upon a close examination you will find it to be peculiarly fitted and furnished for the execution of its office. It is armed with two pair of very strong jaws, the upper terminating in short and the lower in long teeth, by which it can both lacerate and grind its food—its stomach is of extraordinary capacity and powers—its hind legs enable it to leap to a considerable distance, and its ample vans are calculated to catch the wind as sails, and so to carry it sometimes over the sea; and although a single individual can effect but little evil, yet when the entire surface of a country is covered by them, and every one makes bare the spot on which it stands, the mischief produced may be as infinite as their numbers. So well do the Arabians know their power, that they make a locust say to Mahomet—"We are the army of the Great God; we produce ninety-nine eggs; if the hundred were completed, we should consume the whole earth and all that is in it[378]."
Since it is possible you may not have paid particular attention to the accounts given by various authors both ancient and modern, of the almost incredible injury done to the human race by these creatures, I shall now lay before you some of the most striking particulars of their devastations that I have been able to collect.
The earliest plague of this kind which has been recorded, appears also to have been the most direful in its immediate effects that ever was inflicted upon any nation. I am speaking, as you may well suppose, of the locusts with which the Egyptian tyrant and his people were visited for their oppression of the Israelites. Only conceive to yourself a country so covered by them that no one can see the face of the ground—a whole land darkened, and all its produce, whether herb or tree, so devoured that not the least vestige of green is left in either[379].—But it is not necessary for me to enlarge further upon a history the circumstances of which are so well known to you.