N

THE LOCUST. 267

Locusts often visit Poland and the south of Europe, and
there have been instances of their reaching our shores, but
the climate of England is happily not suited to their pro-
duction. The female deposits her eggs in cylindrical bur-
rows, several inches long, which may be easily found, as
the aperture is not closed: these eggs are hatched the fol-
lowing year, when the weather is dry and hot ; the number
in each tube is about fifty, they are enclosed in a common
envelope.

In Syria, Egypt, and the southern parts of Asia and
Africa, this most destructive insect makes its appearance in
vast swarms, not only bringing desolation and famine into
the most fertile regions, by devouring every kind of vege-
tation, but causing the most fearful pestilence by the putre-
faction of their dead bodies. Mr. Barrow states, in his
‘Travels,’ that in the southern parts of Africa the whole
surface of the ground might literally be said to be covered
by them, for an area of 1800 square miles. When driven
into the sea by a north-west wind, they formed upon the
shore, for fifty miles, a bank three or four feet high, and
when the wind was south-east, the stench was so powerful
as to be smelt at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles ;
the air, in short, became poisoned by their fetid exhalations.