Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/38

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Rose-coloured Pastor, Pastor roseus, is a most formidable enemy of locusts. It has been asserted that as its occurrence is deemed in many countries no fallacious indication of their appearance, so on any arrival of such a scourge, these birds are seen by the hundred or the thousand to follow the hordes which devastate the country.

Without wishing to believe that this was our case,—that is to say, that to the invasion of the locusts was solely due the arrival, as before stated, of the Rose-coloured Starling in the Veronese Province, and especially at Villafranca, —I believe I shall not be far from the truth in thinking that the presence of the Acridium in the interior of the country, and in quantities so immeasurable, determined the stay here of the numberless troops in which these wandering birds reached us, having been originally perhaps more likely directed towards another part of Europe.

Whatever we may think, however, it was a sufficiently strange fact, at which all naturally marvelled, that at the very time of the invasion of the locusts there should appear so great a number of Rose-coloured Starlings as ive believe could not be reckoned at less than from twelve to fourteen thousand individuals,