ist at this time was hanging over it, high in air. A harsh and shrill
sound, a whizzing or a chirping, proceeded from that cloud to the ear of
the attentive listener. What these indications portended was plain....

The plague of locusts, one of the most awful visitations to which the
countries included in the Roman empire were exposed, extended from the
Atlantic to Ethiopia, from Arabia to India, and from the Nile and Red
Sea to Greece and the north of Asia Minor. Instances are recorded in
history of clouds of the devastating insect crossing the Black Sea to
Poland, and the Mediterranean to Lombardy. It is as numerous in its
species as it is wide in its range of territory. Brood follows brood,
with a sort of family likeness, yet with distinct attributes. It wakens
into existence and activity as early as the month of March; but
instances are not wanting, as in our present history, of its appearance
as late as June. Even one flight comprises myriads upon myriads passing
imagination, to which the drops of rain or the sands of the sea are the
only fit comparison; and hence it is almost a proverbial mode of
expression in the East, by way of describing a vast invading army, to
liken it to the locusts. So dense are they, when upon the wing, that it
is no exaggeration to say that they hide the sun, from which
circumstance indeed their name in Arabic is derived. And so ubiquitous
are they when they have alighted on the earth, that they simply cover or
clothe its surface.

This last characteristic is stated in the sacred account of the plagues
of Egypt, where their faculty of devastation is also mentioned. The
corrupting fly and the bruising and prostrating hail preceded them in
that series of visitations, but _they_ came to do the work of ruin more
thoroughly. For not only the crops and fruits, but the foliage of the
forest itself, nay, the small twigs and the bark of the trees are the
victims of their curious and energetic rapacity. They have been known
even to gnaw the door-posts of the houses. Nor do they execute their
task in so slovenly a way, that, as they have succeeded other plagues,
so they may have successors themselves. They take pains to spoil what
they leave. Like the Harpies, they smear every thing that they touch
with a miserable slime, which has the effect of a virus in corroding, or
as some say, in scorching and burning. And then, perhaps, as if all this
were little, when they can do nothing else, they die; as i