them, every green thing was eaten up, not even the bitter bark of the
orange and pomegranate escaping--a most dreadful famine ensued.--The
poor were seen to wander over the country deriving a miserable
subsistence from the roots of plants; and women and children followed
the camels, from whose dung they picked the indigested grains of
barley, which they devoured with avidity: in consequence of this,
vast numbers perished, and the roads and streets exhibited the
unburied carcases of the dead. On this sad occasion, fathers sold
their children, and husbands their wives[391]. When they visit a
country, says Mr. Jackson, speaking of the same empire, it behoves
every one to lay in provision for a famine, for they stay from three
to seven years. When they have devoured all other vegetables, they
attack the trees, consuming first the leaves and then the bark. From
Mogador to Tangier, before the plague in 1799, the face of the earth
was covered by them--at that time a singular incident occurred at El
Araiche. The whole region from the confines of the Sahara was ravaged
by them: but on the other side of the river El Kos not one of them
was to be seen, though there was nothing to prevent their flying over
it. Till then they had proceeded northward; but upon arriving at
its banks they turned to the east, so that all the country north of
El Araiche was full of pulse, fruits and grain,--exhibiting a most
striking contrast to the desolation of the adjoining district. At
length they were all carried by a violent hurricane into the Western
Ocean; the shore, as in former instances, was covered by their
carcases, and a pestilence was caused by the horrid stench which they
emitted:--but when this evil ceased, their devastations were followed
by a most abundant crop. The Arabs of the Desert, "whose hands are
against every man[392]," and who rejoice in the evil that befalls
other nations, when they behold the clouds of locusts proceeding from
the north are filled with gladness, anticipating a general mortality,
which they call _El-Khere_ (the benediction); for, when a country is
thus laid waste, they emerge from their arid deserts and pitch their
tents in the desolated plains[393].
The noise the locusts make when engaged in the work of destruction
has been compared to the sound of a flame of fire driven by the wind,
and the effect of their bite to that of fire[394]. A wild poet of our
day has very strikingly described the noise produced by their flight
and approach:
"Onward they came a dark continuous cloud
Of congregated myriads numberless,
The rushing of whose wings was as the sound
Of a broad river headlong in its course
Plunged from a mountain summit, or the roar
Of a wild ocean in the autumn storm
Shattering its billows on a shore of rocks[395]!"
But no account of the appearance and ravages of these terrific
insects, for correctness and sublimity, comes near that of the
prophet Joel, "A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds
and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a
great people and a strong: there hath not been ever the like, neither
shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.
A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the
land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate
wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. Like the noise of
chariots[396] on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the
noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong
people set in battle array. Before their faces the people shall be
much pained: all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like
mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war, and they
shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their
ranks; neither shall one thrust another, they shall walk every one
in his path: and when they fall upon the sword they shall not be
wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon
the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in
at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them, the
heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the
stars shall withdraw their shining!" The usual way in which they are
destroyed is also noticed by the prophet. "I will remove far off
from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren
and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part
toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill
savour shall come up, because he hath done great things[397]!"
I think, after a serious consideration of all these well attested
facts, when locusts contend with the two-legged destroyers of the
human race for proud pre-eminence in mischief, you will find it
difficult to determine to which the palm should be decreed; and you
will admire the propriety with which, in the above and other passages
of Holy Writ, they are selected as symbols of the great ravagers of
the earth of our own species.
In many of the above instances these devastators appear to have crossed
the seas, but Hasselquist asserts that they are not formed for such
extensive flights. "The grasshopper or locust," says he, "is not formed
for travelling over the sea,--it cannot fly far, but must alight as
soon as it rises;--for one that came on board us a hundred certainly
were drowned. We observe in the months of May and June a number of
these insects coming from the south, and directing their course to the
northern shore; they darken the sky like a thick cloud; but scarcely
have they quitted the shore, when they, who a moment before ravaged
and ruined the country, cover the surface of the sea with their dead
bodies.--By what instinct do these creatures undertake this dangerous
flight? Is it not the wise institution of the Creator to destroy a
dreadful plague to the country[398]?" Locusts however, as we have seen,
take much longer flights than this author supposes them able to do. It
is probable that their ability in this respect may depend a good deal
upon their species, their age, and the state and direction of the wind;
for, as was the case with the Egyptian plague,
"---- a pitchy cloud
Of locusts warping on the eastern wind"
may by a powerful blast be carried over a broad river, or even the sea,
from one country to another. This idea is strongly confirmed by an
account, exhibiting internal marks of authenticity, which appeared in
the _Alexandria Herald_, an American newspaper; in which it is stated,
that at the distance of 200 miles from the Canary Islands, the nearest
land, the ship Georgia, Capt. Stokes, from Lisbon to Savannah, while
sailing with a fine breeze from the south-east, was, on the 21st of
Nov. 1811, all at once becalmed. "A light air afterwards sprang up from
the north-east, at which time there fell from the cloud an innumerable
quantity of large grasshoppers, so as to cover the deck, the tops and
every part of the ship they could alight upon. They did not appear in
the least exhausted; on the contrary, when an attempt was made to take
hold of them, they instantly jumped, and endeavoured to elude being
taken. The calm, or a very light air, lasted fully an hour, and during
the whole of the time these insects continued to fall upon the ship
and surround her: such as were within reach of the vessel alighted
upon her; but immense numbers fell into the sea, and were seen
floating in masses by the sides." Two bottles of them were preserved
for inspection; the insects were of a reddish hue, with red and gray
speckled wings. It is clear from this account, if it be admitted as
authentic, that locusts can go far from land when the wind is strong,
and likewise it seems equally clear that in a calm they cannot support
themselves in the air. The principal difficulty is, how these locusts
could make their way against the wind, which they must have done if
they came with the black cloud, as the words seem to intimate. Perhaps
this cloud was brought by a different current of air from that which
impelled the ship.
With respect to the course which the locusts pursue, Hasselquist has
observed that they migrate in a direct meridian line from south to
north, passing from the deserts of Arabia, which is the great cradle of
them, to Palestine, Syria, Carmania, Natolia, Bithynia, Constantinople,
Poland, &c.--they never turn either to the east or to the west[399].
But this must be a mistaken notion; for those which Major Moor saw at
Poonah, of which I have given an account above[400], must have come due
east. Mr. Jackson also noticed their course north of the line to be
towards the south[401]; and Sparrman tells us, that those south of the
line migrate in the same direction[402].
I fear that Hasselquist's question, Could they not by fright, or some
other method, be turned from their dreadful course, to steer for
some river, and by that means be obliged to destroy themselves[403]?
must be answered in the negative. All such experiments, it is to be
apprehended, would be about as effectual as sending an army, with
all the apparatus of war, to take the field against them, as this
author says is done in Syria, where the Bashaw of Tripoli once raised
a force of 4000 soldiers to fight the locusts, and very summarily
ordered all to be hanged who thinking it beneath them to waste their
valour upon such pygmy foes, refused to join the party[404].
I am, &c.
FOOTNOTES:
[377] Bochart, _Hierozoic._ P. ii. l. iv. c. 5. 475.
[378] Bochart, _ubi supr._ c. 6. 485.
[379] Exod. x. 5. 14, 15.
[380] _Hist. Nat._ l. xi. c. 29. A similar law was enacted in Lemnos,
by which every one was compelled to bring a certain measure of
locusts annually to the magistrates. Plin. _ibid._
[381] Oros. _contra Pag._ l. v. c. 2.
[382] Lesser, _L._ 247. note 46.
[383] Mouffet, 123.
[384] Bingley, iii. 258.
[385] _Philos. Trans._ 1686.
[386] _Elements of Agricultural Chemistry_, 233.
[387] _Philos. Trans._ xlvi. 30.
[388] Major Moor, author of _The Narrative of Captain Little's
Detachment_, _The Hindu Pantheon_, &c.
[389] _Travels_, i. 348.
[390] _Travels_, &c. 257.
[391] Southey's _Thalaba_, i. 171.
[392] Genes. xvi. 12.
[393] Jackson's _Travels in Marocco_, 54.
[394] See Bochart, _Hierozoic_. P. l. iv. c. 5. 474-5.
[395] Southey's _Thalaba_, i. 169.
[396] Of the symbolical locusts in the Apocalypse it is said--"And
the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots, of many horses
running to battle." ix. 9.
[397] Joel ii. 2-10. 20.
[398] _Voyage to the Levant_, 444.
[399] _Voyage to the Levant_, p. 446-7.
[400] See p. 219.
[401] _Travels_, 54.
[402] _Travels_, i. 366.
[403] _Travels_, 455.
[404] _Travels_, 447.
LETTER VIII.
_INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS._
INDIRECT INJURIES CONCLUDED.
I have not yet arrived at the end of my catalogue of noxious insects.
I have introduced you, indeed, to those that annoy man in his own
person, in his domestic animals, in the produce of his fields,
gardens, orchards, and forests; in a word, in every thing that is
endued with the vital principle: but I have as yet said nothing
of the injuries which he receives from them in that part of his
property, consisting either of animal or vegetable matter, _from
which that principle is departed_. And with these I shall conclude
this melancholy detail of evils inflicted upon us by the very animals
I am enticing you to study. The rest of my correspondence, I flatter
myself, will paint them in more inviting colours.
The insects to which I now allude may be divided into those that
attack and injure our food, our drugs and medicines, our clothes, our
houses and furniture, our timber, and even the objects of our studies
and amusements.
Various are those that attempt to share our _food_ with us. Flour and
meal are eaten by the grub of _Tenebrio Molitor_, best known by the
name of the meal-worm, which will remain in it two years before it goes
into its state of inactivity:--its ravages however are not confined to
flour alone, for it will eat any thing made of that article, such as
bread, cakes, and the like. Old flour is also very apt to be infested
by a mite (_Acarus Farinæ_)[405]. In long voyages the biscuit sometimes
so swarms with the weevil and another beetle (_Dermestes paniceus_,
L.) that they are swallowed with every mouthful; and even the ground
peas so abound with these little vermin, that a spoonful of soup cannot
be taken free from them[406]. Bread is also devoured by _Trogosita
caraboides_, a larger beetle before alluded to[407].
Every one is aware that our animal food suffers still more than our
farinaceous from insects; but perhaps you would not expect that our
hams, bacon, and dried meats should have their peculiar beetle. Yet
so it is; and this beetle, (_Dermestes lardarius_,) when a grub,
sometimes commits great devastation in them; as does that of another
described by De Geer under the name of _Tenebrio lardarius_[408].
How much our fresh meat of all kinds, our poultry and fish, are
exposed to the flesh-fly, whose maggots will turn us disgusted
from our tables, if we do not carefully guard these articles from
being blown by them, you well know;--and assailants more violent,
hornets, wasps, and the great rove-beetle, (_Creophilus maxillosus_)
if butchers do not protect their shambles, will carry off no
inconsiderable portion of their meat. A small cock-roach (_Blatta
lapponica_) which I have taken upon our eastern coast, swarms in the
huts of the Laplanders, and will sometimes annihilate in a single
day, a work in which a carrion-beetle (_Silpha lapponica_) joins,
their whole stock of dried fish[409]. The quantity of sugar that
flies and wasps will devour, if they can come at it, especially
the latter, the diminutive size of the creatures considered, is
astonishing:--in one year long ago, when sugar was much cheaper
than it is now, a tradesman told me he calculated his loss, by the
wasps alone, at twenty pounds. A singular spectacle is exhibited in
India (so Captain Green relates) by a small red ant with a black
head. They march in long files, about three abreast, to any place
where sugar is kept; and when they are saturated, return in the
same order, but by a different route. If the sugar, upon which they
are busy, be carried into the sun, they immediately desert it. What
is very extraordinary, these ants are also fond of oil. Sweetmeats
and preserves are very subject to be attacked by a minute oblong
transparent mite with very short legs and without any hair upon its
body. Our butter and lard are stated to be eaten by the caterpillar
of a moth (_Aglossa pinguinalis_). _Tyrophaga_[410] _Casei_, the
parent fly of the jumping cheese-maggot, loses no opportunity, we
know, of laying its eggs in our fresh cheeses, and when they get
dry and old the mite (_Acarus Siro_) settles her colonies in them,
which multiply incredibly. Other substances, more unlikely, do not
escape from our pygmy depredators. Thus Reaumur tells us of a little
moth whose larva feeds upon chocolate, observing very justly that
this could not have been its original food[411]. Both a moth and
a beetle (_Sylvanus frumentarius?_) were detected by Leeuwenhoek
preying upon two of our spices, the mace and the nutmeg[412]. The
maggots of a fly (_Oscinis cellaris_) are found in vinegar, in the
manufactories of which the perfect insects swarm in incredible
numbers; others I have found in wine, which turned to a minute fly,
of a yellow colour, with dark eyes and abdomen, which though near
_Anthomyia_ as to its wings, appears to belong to a distinct genus
not published by Meigen, which in my MS. stands under the name of
_Oinopota ventralis_; and sometimes even water in the casks of ships,
in long voyages, so abounds with larvæ of this tribe as to render it
extremely disgusting. Browne, in his History of Jamaica, mentions
an ant (_Formica omnivora_, L.) probably belonging to _Myrmica_,
that consumes or spoils all kinds of food; which perhaps may be
the same species that has been observed in Ceylon by Percival, and
is described by him as inhabiting dwelling-houses, and speedily
devouring every thing it can meet with. If at table any one drops a
piece of bread, or of other food, it instantly appears in motion as
if animated, from the vast number of these creatures that fasten upon
it in order to carry it off. They can be kept, he tells us, by no
contrivance from invading the table, and settling in swarms on the
bread, sugar, and such things as they like. It is not uncommon to see
a cup of tea, upon being poured out, completely covered with these
creatures, and floating dead upon it like a scum[413].
In some countries the number of flies and other insects that enter the
house in search of food, or allured by the light, is so great as to
spoil the comfort of almost every meal. We are told that during the
rainy season in India, insects of all descriptions are so incredibly
numerous, and so busy every where, that it is often absolutely
necessary to remove the lights from the supper-table:--were this not
done, moths, flies, bugs, beetles, and the like, would be attracted
in such numbers as to extinguish them entirely. When the lights
are retained on the table, in some places they are put into glass
cylinders, which St. Pierre tells us is the custom in the Island of
Mauritius[414]; in others the candlesticks are placed in soup-plates,
into which the insects are precipitated and drowned. Nothing can exceed
the irritation caused by the stinking bugs when they get into the hair
or between the linen and the body; and if they be bruised upon it the
skin comes off[415]. To use the language of a poet of the Indies, from
whom some of the above facts are selected,
"On every dish the booming beetle falls,
The cock-roach plays, or caterpillar crawls:
A thousand shapes of variegated hues
Parade the table and inspect the stews.
To living walls the swarming hundreds stick,
Or court, a dainty meal, the oily wick;
Heaps over heaps their slimy bodies drench,
Out go the lamps with suffocating stench.
When hideous insects every plate defile,
The laugh how empty, and how forced the smile[416]!"
Drugs and medicines also, though often so nauseous to us,
form occasionally part of the food of insects. A small beetle
(_Sinodendrum pusillum_[417]) eats the roots of rhubarb, in which I
detected it in the East India Company's warehouses. Opium is a dainty
_morceau_ to the white ants[418];--and, what is more extraordinary,
_Anobium paniceum_[419] (a coleopterous insect that preys naturally
upon wood) has been known to devour the blister-beetle.--Swammerdam
amongst his treasures mentions "a detestable beetle," produced from a
worm that eats the roots of ginseng; and he likewise notices another,
the larva of which devours the bag of the musk[420].--The cochineal
at Rio de Janeiro is the prey of an insect resembling an Ichneumon,
but furnished with only two wings; its station is in the cotton that
envelops the Coccus. Previous to its assumption of the pupa it ejects
a large globule of pure red colouring matter[421]. And lastly, the
Coccus that produces the lac (_C. Lacca_) is, we are told, devoured
by various insects[422].
Perhaps you imagine that these universal destroyers spare at least
our garments, in which you may at first conceive there can be
nothing very tempting to excite even the appetite of an insect. Your
housekeeper, however, would probably tell you a different story, and
enlarge upon the trouble and pains it costs her to guard those under
her care against the ravages of the moths. Upon further inquiry you
would find that nothing made of wool, whether cloth or stuff, comes
amiss to them. There are five species described by Linné, which are
more or less engaged in this work: _Tinea vestianella_, _tapetzella_,
_pellionella_, _Recurvaria sarcitella_, and _Galleria Mellonella_.
Of the first we have no particular history, except that it destroys
garments in the summer; but of the others Reaumur has given a
complete one. _T. tapetzella_, or the tapestry moth, not uncommon in
our houses, is most injurious to the lining of carriages, which are
more exposed to the air than the furniture of our apartments. These
do not construct a moveable habitation like the common species, but,
eating their way in the thickness of the cloth, weave themselves
silken galleries in which they reside, and which they render close
and warm by covering them with some of the eroded wool[423]. _T.
pellionella_ is a most destructive insect, and ladies have often to
deplore the ravages which it commits in their valuable furs, whether
made up into muffs or tippets--it pays no more respect to the regal
ermine than to the woollen habiliments of the poor; its proper
food, indeed, being hair, though it devours both wool and fur. This
species, if hard pressed by hunger, will even eat horsehair, and make
its habitation, a moveable house or case, in which it travels from
place to place, of this untractable material. These little creatures
will shave the hair from a skin as neatly and closely as if a razor
had been employed[424].--The most natural food of the next species,
_R. sarcitella_, is wool; but in case of necessity it will eat fur
and hair. To woollen cloths or stuffs it often does incredible
injury, especially if they are not kept dry and well aired[425]. Of
the devastation committed by _Galleria Mellonella_ in our bee-hives
I have before given you an account: to this I must here add, that if
it cannot come at wax, it will content itself with woollen cloth,
leather, or even paper[426]. Mr. Curtis found the grub of a beetle
(_Ptinus Fur_) in an old coat, which it devoured, making holes and
channels in it; and another insect of the same order (_Megatoma
Pellio_), Linné tells us, will sometimes entirely strip a fur garment
of its hair[427]. A small beetle of the Capricorn tribe (_Callidium
pygmæum_) I have good reason to believe devours leather, since I have
found it abundant in old shoes.