LOCUSTS.

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does in 1729. But the affairs of Barbadoes are not to mypurpose, except to illustrate my meaning, as to the vastpower of insects. Insects are far more than a match for us,as I could show had I the space. We all see that they tyran-nise over us, even so far as to turn our livers, stomachs,bowels, skin, books, bedding, into food and habitations forthemselves and families. And at a future period, I shallin this work endeavour to show that the yellow fever,cholera, the plague, and some other disorders of the humansystem, are occasioned by attempts at organisation ofanimalised rudiments, which, seizing on our humours, asthe dry-rot fungi seize on the juices of timber, endeavour,and in part succeed, in converting them into rudimentalorganisations similar to themselves.

The accounts of the astonishing clouds of locusts, whichin some countries darken the air, and destroy vegetation likea raging fire, over many hundred square miles in a fewhours, are familiar to most persons. The fertile wheat re-gions of Apulia, Capitanata, and a part of Calabria , haveoften been cursed by the desolating visitations of those terrificinsects. It appears that the first of a series of depredationsis generally to be atributedto a cloud of them, that has comeover from Sicily and Africa. But it has been ascertained,that as they lay their eggs in the earth, which producelarvae, that become locusts the third year, such third yearafter a visit of locusts from abroad, produces an indigenousrace, that spreads ruin around, in detatched clouds, each ofwhich will destroy the crops upon the surface of a countyin two or three days. I will anticipate the chronologicalorder of this recital, by a few years, in order to mentionthat in 1808, King Joachim caused the municipalitiesof Apulia , and other provinces, known to be infestedwith the larvae of the locusts, to offer a reward of somuch a bushel for their grubs. The reward was so hand-