Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/577

 LOCUST 571 distance ; they may be known by their small size, and their keeled thorax resembling a reversed boat. The celebrated locust of the East (locusta migratoria, Linn. ; placed in the genus acrydium by Latreille) is about 2^- in. long, of a greenish col or obscurely spotted, with Fale brown wing covers marked with black, ts special habitat is western Asia, northern Africa, and southern Europe, whence it has spread even to England and northern Europe. It is destructive in all its forms, in the larval, nymph, and perfect conditions, feeding vora- ciously on plants. It will be sufficient here to allude to the devastations committed by locusts, as most books of eastern travel describe the steady and irresistible progress of their vast swarms, destroying every trace of vegetation in the districts visited by them. Their numbers are so incredible that rivers have been blocked and many square miles covered by them, the stench of their decaying bodies infecting the air for hundreds of miles. Messrs. Kirby and Spence mention an army of locusts which rav- aged the Mahratta country, extending in a col- umn 500 miles long, and so compact that it ob- scured the sun like an eclipse ; this, however, Eastern Locust (Locusta migratoria). was another species, of a red color, which pro- duced an additional bloody hue as they stripped the trees of their foliage. Many are the allu- sions in the Old Testament to the flight of these insects, and the prophet Joel (ch. ii.) gives a magnificent description of their appearance. The locusts were considered by the Hebrews and other eastern nations, and still are by the Arabs, as the avenging armies of the Deity ; the latter assert that a statement to this effect exists in good Arabic on the wings of the in- sect ; they do not occur in large swarms every year, but only every fourth or fifth season, and generally toward the end of May. Lo- custs are used as food in the countries where they abound ; the legs and wings being pulled off, the bodies are fried in oil, and are con- sidered a delicacy ; they are sometimes dried in the sun, pounded up, and used as a flour for making bread. In many towns in Arabia there are shops where locusts are sold by mea- sure. Other species are common in Africa, where they are also used as food. Gordon Gumming describes these insects in Africa as coming on like a snow storm, flying slowly and steadily about 100 yards from the ground; the air w T as darkened by their masses, and the plain upon which he stood became densely covered with them ; as far as the eye could reach in every direction, they stretched in one unbroken cloud, and more than an hour elapsed before their devastating legions swept by; they form in Africa food for man, cattle, car- nivora, and birds. Locusts have also commit- ted considerable ravages in America ; most of the devastation popularly attributed to grass- hoppers really belongs to locusts, and most often to the red-legged species (0. femur-ru- brum, Burm.) ; they have proved specially destructive to the grass of salt meadows, clo- ver, corn, and vegetables, until arrested by the early frosts ; the hay crop is sometimes so much tainted by their decaying bodies that cat- tle refuse to eat it. Toward the middle of the 18th century these insects were so abundant in northern New England that days of fasting and prayer were appointed on account of the wide-spread calamity; and of late years they have been very destructive in the newly settled western states and territories. The C. spretus, popularly but erroneously called a "grasshop- per," has this year (1874) committed terrible ravages in Minnesota and other western states, destroying about one tenth of the grain crop. Various methods have been resorted to to check the ravages of locusts. A bounty has been given for their eggs ; they are devoured by insectivorous mammals and birds, especial- ly domestic fowls ; the sand wasp preys upon them; intestinal worms (gordius) and red mites (ocypete) feed upon their juices and finally kill them ; winds sweep them into the sea, and immense numbers are drowned by the high tides which inundate the marshes. The natural causes of destruction, after all, are more to be relied on than the occasional and isolated attempts of the farmer, who here rarely suffers in comparison with those of east- ern nations. The harvest fly and some species of grasshoppers are often erroneously called locusts in the United States. (See GEASSHOP- PER, and HARVEST FLY.) LOCUST (Robinid), a North American genus of trees and shrubs, of the order leguminosce; they have stipular spines, flat seeds in many : seeded, compressed pods, preceded by showy white or rose-colored flowers, in simple, usu- ally pendent, axillary racemes. The common locust tree (R. pseudacacid) grows in some districts to a great size, in the southwest reach- ing 70 or 80 ft. with a diameter of 4 ft. ; it has a straight, lofty stem, covered with a thick, deeply and irregularly furrowed bark, and with strong, rude branches, ending in slender, virgate spray, which is clothed in summer with a soft velvety foliage, consisting of unequally pinnate leaves, often seen bright and clean by the dusty roadsides in the heat of the season, and then refreshingly beautiful ; or earlier, with a profusion of fragrant, clus- tered, pendent blossoms. The locust tree loves the fertile soils westward of the Alleghany mountains, and extends thence as far as Ar-