space of several leagues. The noise they make in browsing on the trees and herbage, may be heard at a great distance, and resembles that of an army in secret. The Tartars themselves are a less destructive enemy than these little animals. One would imagine that fire had followed their progress. Wherever their myriads spread, the verdure of the country disappears; trees and plants stripped of their leaves, and reduced to their naked boughs and stems, cause the dreary image of winter to succeed in an instant to the rich scenery of the spring. When these clouds of locusts take their flight, to surmount any obstacles, or to traverse more rapidly a desert soil, the heavens may literally be said to be obscured with them. Happily this calamity is not frequently repeated, for it is the inevitable forerunner of famine, and the maladies it occasions.

The locust is employed in the Book of Revelation, to symbolize the countless and savage hordes that fought under the banners of the Saracen princes: 'And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth, and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power, and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man ;—and the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were, as it were, crowns of gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women: and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breast-plates, as it were breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails,—and they had a king over them,' Rev. ix. 1-12. This remarkable comparison, says Paxton, is almost, in every particular, quite familiar to the Arabs. Niebuhr, in his description of Arabia, informs us, that an Arab of the desert near Bassorah, mentioned to him a singular comparison of the locust with other animals. The terrible locust of this passage not then occurring to him, he regarded the comparison as a jest of the Arab, and paid no attention to it, till it was repeated by another from Bagdad. He compared the head of the locust to that of the horse; its breast to that of the lion; its feet to those of the camel; its body to that of the serpent; its tail to that of the scorpion; its horns to the locks of hair of a virgin; and so of the other parts.

We have already remarked, that almost all writers on natural history notice that the head of a locust bears a striking resemblance to that of a horse. The Greeks called it the horse of the earth. Accoutred for war, and mounted by a stern and bearded warrior, the Arabian charger has a majestic and terrible appearance: not less dreadful to the inhabitants of the east is the locust, in all the vigor of youth, ready to commence his destructive march. The Saracen furnished his horse with a silver bridle, and gilt trappings, and covered his neck and breast with plates of iron: it is, therefore, not improbable, that he adorned his head with some ornament resembling a crown, to which the horns or antennæ of the locust may nct

improperly be compared. The neck of this formidable insect is also defended by a hard scaly substance, in the same manner as the neck of the Arabian war-horse was defended by plates of iron. The Arabian horse is carefully taught to recognise his enemy in the field of battle, which he no sooner does, than he rushes upon him with the utmost violence, and attempts to tear him in pieces with his teeth. The teeth of the locust are very sharp and strong. With what astonishing rapidity this insect devours every green thing, and scatters desolation over the fairest regions of the earth, has already been described; from whence it appears, that the comparison of the Saracen horse to the locust, is by no means inapplicable. Nor is the sound of their wings less remarkable: the inspired writer says, 'The sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle;' and travellers have stated, that 'the passage of the locust over their heads was like the noise of a great cataract.'

A great deal has been written on the nature of the food adopted by John the Baptist, one article of which is stated to have been 'locusts,' Matt. iii. 4. The dispute has been as to whether these were the insects so called, or the fruit of a certain tree designated by the same name. That locusts properly so called were allowed to the Jews as an article of food, is certain from Lev. xi. 22; and that they are actually used for this purpose in many parts of the East, we have the testimony of several unexceptionable writers. But notwithstanding this, we are of opinion that the insect, which required curing and cooking, and which is deemed by the Arabs a great delicacy, formed no part of the plain and simple, and as it would appear both from the testimony of scripture, and from the customs of the pseudo disciples of John, still existing in Syria, the exclusively vegetable diet of the holy Baptist.

THE beetle is mentioned only in Lev. xi. 22. It is thought by some critics to be a species of the locust, but by others, the very kind of scarabæus which the ancient Egyptians held in such veneration as to pay it divine honors.

In the Philosophical Transactions there is a paper on the bruchus, a great number of which were found in Ireland, in the year 1688. We shall present our readers with a few extracts from this work, leaving them to form their own judgment, as to the identity of the insect described with the canker-worm of scripture.

"These insects appeared first on the south-west coast of the county of Galway, whence they made their way into the more inland parts, where multitudes of them showed themselves among the trees and hedges in the day-time, hanging by the boughs, thousands together, in clusters, sticking to the back of one another, as is the manner of bees when they swarm. In this posture, or lying still, and covert under the leaves of the trees, or clinging to the branches,

they continued quiet, with little or no motion, during the heat of the sun, but towards evening or sun-set they would all rise, disperse, and fly about, with a strange humming noise, much like the beating of drums at some distance, and in such vast incredible numbers, that they darkened the air for the space of two or three miles square.

"A short while after their coming, they had so entirely eat up and destroyed all the leaves of the trees for some miles round about, that the whole country, though it was in the middle of summer, was left as bare and naked as if it had been in the depth of winter, making a most unseemly, and, indeed, frightful appearance: and the noise they made whilst they were seizing and devouring this, their prey, was as surprising; for the grinding of the leaves in the mouths of this vast multitude all together, made a sound very much resembling the sawing of timber. Nor were the trees abroad, and the hedges in the field the only sufferers by this vermin; they came also into the gardens, and destroyed the buds, blossoms, and leaves of all the fruit trees, that they were left perfectly naked; nay, many of them that were more delicate than the rest, lost their sap as well as leaves, and quite withered away, so that they never recovered it again. Nay, their multitude spread so exceedingly, that they disturbed men in even their dwellings; for out of the gardens they got into the houses, where numbers of them crawling about were very irksome, and they would often drop on the meat as it was dressing in the kitchen, and frequently fall from the ceiling of the rooms into the dishes as they stood on the table while they ate; so extremely offensive and loathsome were they, as well as prejudicial and destructive,

'Nor did the mischievous effects of this pernicious vermin stop here; their numerous creeping spawn, which they had lodged under ground next to the upper sod of the earth, did more harm in that close retirement, than all the flying swarms of their parents had done abroad; for this young destructive brood did not withhold from what was much more necessary to have been spared, and what their sires had left untouched: these lying under ground, fell to devouring the roots of the corn and grass, and eating them up, ruined both the support of man and beast; for these, losing their roots, soon withered and came to nought, to the vast damage of the country.

'But notwithstanding this plague of vermin did thus mightily prevail and infest the country, yet it would have been still more violent, had not its rage been fortunately checked several ways. High winds, wet and misling weather, were extremely disagreeable to the nature of this insect; and so prejudicial as to destroy many millions of them in one day's time: whence I gather, that though we have them in these northern moist climates, they are more natural, and more peculiarly belonging to warm and dry countries. Whenever these ill constitutions of the air prevailed, their bodies were so enfeebled, they would let go their holds, and drop to the

ground from the branches where they stuck, and so little a fall as this, at that time, was of sufficient force quite to disable, and sometimes perfectly kill them. Nay, it was observable, that even when they were most agile and vigorous, a slight blow or offence would for some time hinder their motion, if not deprive them of life, which was very extraordinary in a creature of that strength and vivacity in its flight. During these unfavorable seasons of weather, the swine and poultry of the country at length grew so cunning, as to watch under the trees for their falling; and when they came to the ground eat them up in abundance, being much pleased with the food, and thriving well upon the diet; nay, I have been assured, that the poorer sort of the native Irish (the country then laboring under a scarcity of provision) had a way of dressing them, and lived upon them as food; nor is it strange, that what fattened our domestic poultry and hogs, should afford agreeable and sufficient nourishment for the relief of man.

'But towards the latter end of the summer, the exact time I have not learnt, they constantly eased the country, and retired of themselves; and so wholly disappeared, that in a few days you should not see one left in all those parts that were so lately pestered with them.

"This pernicious insect of ours, I am fully convinced from good reasons, is that self-same so often mentioned in holy Scripture, and commonly joined in company with the locust, as being both great destroyers of the fruits of the earth.'

THE CATERPILLAR.

IN Hebrew this insect is called the consumer, and in 1 Kings viii. 37; 2 Chron. vi. 28; Joel i. 4; chap. ii. 25; it is distinguished from the locust properly so called. In Joel i. 4, it is mentioned as eating up what the other species had left, and therefore might well be called the consumer, by way of eminence. But the ancient interpreters are far from being agreed what particular species it signifies.

THE PALMER-WORM.

BOCHART is of opinion that this insect is a kind of locust, furnished with very sharp teeth, with which it gnaws off grass, corn, leaves of trees, and even their bark. The Jews support this idea