here is called Arbah, which imports multiplicity; a very just name,
indeed: for their prodigious numbers almost defy calculation; and the
famous Dutch naturalist Leuwenhoek asserts, that every female lays
upwards of eighty eggs. When a cloud of these insects alights upon the
ground, the devastation they create is dreadful. Adanson, in his voyage
to the western coast of Africa, says, that they devoured to the very
root and bark; and that there was something corrosive in their bite,
which prevented the trees from recovering their power of vegetation for
some time. They even attacked the dry reeds with which the huts were
thatched. Another traveller tells us that in Cyprus, as he went from
Larnica to a garden at about four miles’ distance, the locusts lay above
a foot deep, on several parts of the high roads, and millions were
destroyed by the wheels of the carriage. Dr. Shaw says, that he saw them
in such multitudes in Barbary, in the middle of April, that in the heat
of the day, when they formed themselves into large bodies, they
appeared like a succession of clouds darkening the sun: in June the new
broods made their appearance; on being hatched, they collected together
in compact bodies of several hundred yards square; and marching directly
forward, climbed over trees, walls and houses, ate up every plant in
their way, and let nothing escape. The inhabitants made trenches and
filled them with water; they also placed quantities of combustible
matter in rows and set them on fire; but in vain, for the trenches were
quickly filled up and the fires extinguished by the vast numbers that
succeeded each other.
“Strong winds, which can alone free a country from this plague, have
several times blown large swarms over the central part of Europe, and
even to England; and it was a ‘mighty west wind,’ which formerly carried
them away from Egypt and cast them into the Red Sea.” I asked if these
insects were really eatable, as St. John is said to have lived on
locusts in the wilderness?
“As it is well known,” said my uncle, “that locusts have in all ages
been eaten in the east, and are still esteemed a great delicacy in
Barbary as well as in the south of Africa, some commentators have
endeavoured to prove that St. John did eat them in the wilderness. But
the word translated locusts, signifies also _pods_ or seed-vessels of
trees. The pods of some of the Robinia and Gleditsia tribes are
considered in Syria to be sweet and nourishing; and it is, I believe,
generally supposed that they were the food alluded to in the Gospels.”
_29th._--In our genius conversation to-day, several people were
mentioned on each side: Mary quoted a passage from Johnson’s Lives of
the Poets respecting Denham, who, he says, was “considered at Oxford as
a dreaming young man, given more to cards and dice than to study;--he
gave no prognostics of his future eminence, nor was suspected to
conceal, under sluggishness and idleness, a genius born to improve the
literature of his country.” “Of Swift, too,” continued Mary, “there
appears no early proof of genius or diligence; for when at the usual
time he claimed a bachelorship of arts, he was found by the examiners
too conspicuously deficient for regular admission--and at last obtained
his degree by special favour; a term used, as Johnson says, in the
university of Dublin, to denote want of merit.” It is probable,
therefore, that new circumstances combined together afterwards to _bring
out_ the powers possessed by these celebrated men; and I am sure, mamma,
this little perpetual argument serves to bring out several very
entertaining biographical facts.
Haydn, the famous composer, was the son of a wheelwright; such an
employment was not likely to lead to the cultivation of music, and we
might be tempted to consider him as a natural genius; but it appears
that his father played on the harp, and on holidays used to accompany
his wife while she sang. Whenever this little domestic concert took
place, the child, with two pieces of wood in his hands, to represent a
violin and a bow, pretended also to accompany his mother’s voice; and to
the very close of his life, this great musician used to perform with
delight the airs which she had then sung. A cousin of theirs, a
schoolmaster, came to see them, and being well pleased with the boy’s
talents, proposed to educate him. His parents accepted the offer; and at
school, having discovered a tambourine, an instrument which has but two
tones, he succeeded in forming a kind of air, which attracted the
attention of all who came to the school-house. He was then taught to
sing at the parish desk, and was soon noticed by Reüter, who tried him
with a difficult shake, and who was so delighted with the child’s
execution, that he emptied a plate of cherries into his pocket. He was
eight when admitted to the choir of St. Stephen, at Vienna, and from
that time practised above sixteen hours a day. “In all this,” says Mary,
“we see the natural effect of circumstances, and no mark of what is
called absolute genius.”
_30th._--Colonel Travers was not present at our conversation about the
locusts; but on its being alluded to this evening, he told us that he
had once seen a flight of those creatures which contained such an
incredible multitude, that nothing could have persuaded him of the fact,
if he had not been an eye-witness to it himself.
Instead of going by sea to India, he went overland, that is, through
part of Turkey, Arabia, and Persia; and, in 1811, he happened to be at
Smyrna, in Asia Minor, when this extraordinary flight of locusts
occurred. He says that for several days stragglers had been passing, but
at last the main body came, and in such a dense column, as not indeed to
obscure the sun, but to produce a curious quivering light. He thinks the
lines in which they appeared to fly were about one foot asunder, and
that locust followed locust at the distance of three feet. They came in
a steady, undeviating direction from south to north, and continued to
pass, without any diminution of their numbers, for three successive days
and nights. The breadth of this prodigious column was at least forty
miles, for a messenger who had been dispatched by the consul to the
pasha of Sardis, passed through them all the way, both going and
returning. Caroline immediately produced the map of Asia Minor, and we
found that Sardis is fully that distance from Smyrna, and that its
direction is just at right angles to the direction of their flight.
My uncle was greatly interested by the Colonel’s account of this
remarkable swarm, and proposed that we should endeavour to make some
estimate of the number of locusts of which it consisted. We all took out
our pencils and went to work. In the first place, the breadth of the
column was 40 miles, or 70,400 yards; and as their ranks were a foot
apart, we have 211,200 for the number of locusts at each foot of
elevation. Colonel T. was then examined as to the entire height; he
thinks it must have been much above 300 yards, for on looking upwards
with his pocket telescope, he could see them like little specks
glittering in the sun. We contented ourselves with the 300, and taking
them also at a foot apart, there were of course 900 locusts in height,
by which we multiplied the former number, and the product was
190,080,000. Now, mamma, for the length of the column: he says there was
a gentle breeze from the southward, with which, and their own velocity,
he thinks that they were travelling at the rate of about seven miles in
an hour, and that they succeeded each other at an average distance of
three feet. In each mile, then, there were 1760, and in seven miles,
12,320, which, multiplied by 72, the number of hours in the three days
which the flight continued, gives 887,040 for the number in each line
of the column; and this, finally multiplied by the 190 millions, gives
the almost inconceivable total of 168,608,563,200,000 in this one swarm
of locusts!
“I should like to know,” said Mary, “the exact size of these creatures.”
The Colonel said that he could not answer exactly, without referring to
his journals, which were in town, but that he imagined they were about
the same size as a large grasshopper: “But why do you want their exact
dimensions?”
Mary said she would have tried what sized mountain they would have made
if they were all heaped together. Frederick, who is a great collector of
grubs and insects, immediately brought down some dried grasshoppers, but
they were very small; and after much consultation, it was agreed to
assume two inches for the length, and a third of an inch for the breadth
and thickness of a locust. In a short time, Mary announced, as the
result of her calculation, that the whole quantity would amount to 4818
millions of cubic yards.
“But in order to compare this huge mass with some tangible standard,”
said my uncle, “let us see what proportion it bears to the largest
pyramid of Egypt. According to the measurement of Dr. Greaves, the base
of the pyramid of Cheops is 693 feet, and its perpendicular altitude is
499 feet.”
We again went to work, and Mary was again first with the answer, that
her heap of locusts was 1030 times larger than the pyramid!
“Well, Bertha,” said my aunt, “you and I will try what sort of a girdle
the Colonel’s locusts would make for the earth, supposing them to be
placed close together; but what shall we assume for its circumference?”
My uncle said we might take 24,800 miles; and with my kind aunt’s
assistance, I had the pleasure of astonishing the party with the
information, that this great swarm of locusts would have encircled the
globe with a band of a mile and an eighth wide!
If these locusts had alighted any where in a body, I suppose they would
have destroyed every thing; as it was, Colonel T. says, the stragglers
did a great deal of mischief throughout the country, and he mentioned a
laughable story of the wife of an English merchant at Smyrna, with whom
he was acquainted. This lady was very fond of her garden, and on the
approach of the locusts she and her maids had spread sheets and
table-cloths over all her choice flower-beds to protect the plants. Poor
woman! she went to bed priding herself on her ingenuity, but when the
morning came, she found all gone--not only the flowers, but the linen
also totally demolished.
In answer to a question from my uncle, he said he had not been able to
learn whether any great proportion of these locusts had penetrated into
Russia and Europe, but he knew that myriads had perished in the sea of
Marmora and the Euxine. In the gulf of Smyrna he had himself seen a
ridge of their dead bodies, which was two feet high, and which had been
washed up along the whole extent of the beach by the waves. The smell
was most noxious, polluting the air for several miles inland; and this,
he thinks, may partly account for the plague which occurred in the
following spring. There is a saying in that country, but for the truth
of which he does not vouch, that every seven years Arabia sends a swarm
of those destructive insects into Asia Minor, though very rarely of such
magnitude as that of 1811; and that every locust-year is succeeded by a
plague-year of more or less severity.
Wentworth asked him if he had ever seen locusts used as food; and he
replied that they are eaten in a great many parts of the world, and
cooked in a great variety of ways. In some countries they are stewed, or
fried, or made into soup, or salted and preserved; in others they are
ground, mixed up with flour, and baked into cakes; but he had frequently
seen the Arabs eat them without any preparation whatever, merely pulling
off the head, wings, and legs, just as we eat shrimps.
My uncle and he continued to converse on the subject for some time, and
I learned one more fact for you,--that their flight produces a sort of
indistinct, tumultuous sound, something like the rustling noise of
flames. The Colonel says this noise made his horse very uneasy, which no
doubt was greatly increased by the locusts incessantly striking against
him. In riding to Bournabat, where the English merchants have country
houses, he crossed their line of flight; and in order to save his face,
he was obliged to keep his hat on the side of his head, against which
they pattered like a shower of hail. It appears that they never turn to
the right or to the left, but fly straight forward, as if following one
supreme leader, or rather as blindly impelled by some irresistible
influence.
“How truly,” exclaimed my aunt, “it is said of them in the Bible, ‘The
locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.’”
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON:
Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES,
Stamford-street.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Sula communis.
[2] The cashew-nut.
[3] See Forbes’ Oriental Memoirs, and Asiatic Researches.
[4] Lord of the Isles, c. iii.
[5] Bakewell’s Travels.
[6] Exodus vii. 13.
[7] Exod. vii. 22, viii. 19 & 32, ix. 7.
[8] Numbers, xxxiii. 4.