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preserves them from such kind of depredation, nothing can protect their fields from a much more fatal scourge. Clouds of locusts frequently alight on their plains, and giving the preference to their fields of millet, ravage them in an instant. Their approach darkens the horizon, and, so enormous is their multitude, it hides the light of the sun. When the husbandmen happen to be sufficiently numerous, they, sometimes, divert the storm, by their agitation and their cries; but when they fail, the locusts alight on their fields, and there form a bed of six or seven inches thick. the noise of their flight succeeds that of their devouring activity; it resembles the rattling of hail-stones, but its consequences are infinitely more destructive. Fire itself eats not so fast, nor is there a vestige of vegetation to be found, when they again take their flight, and go elsewhere to produce like disasters.

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"This plague, no doubt, would be more extensive in countries better cultivated; and Greece and Asia Minor would be more frequently exposed, did not the Black sea swallow up most of those swarms which attempt to pass that barrier.

"I have often seen the shores of the Pontus Euxinus, towards the Bosphorus of Thrace, covered with their dried remains, in such multitudes, that one could not walk along the strand without sinking half-leg deep into a bed of these skinny skeletons. Curious to know the true cause of their destruction, I sought

the moment of observation, and was a witness of their ruin by a storm, which overtook them so near the shore, that their bodies were cast upon the land, while yet entire. This produced an infection so great, that it was several days before they could be approached."

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They frequently then, according to this writer, in that part of the world pass, or attempt to pass, from the North to the South. In Judea they have been supposed to go from the South-eastward in a contrary direction."

And if this is the common route they take there, it must have struck the Jews very much when they found the Prophet predicting the going of the locusts to the Southward; and still more so when they found it exactly accomplished, as it was a demonstration of the perfect foreknowledge of JEHOVAH, perhaps of his guiding and directing those vast bodies of insects. The locusts, it is said, have no king, yet go they forth by bands, (Prov. xxx. 27.) But if they have no king of their own species, they are undoubtedly under the direction of the GOD that made them: he is their king.

There is an account, in the 10th vol. Philos. Trans. abridged, of locusts that penetrated into Transylvania from Walachia and Moldavia, in which the writer tells us, that in changing

P Memoirs, part 2, p. 58-60.

See le Bruyn, tome 2, p. 152; Gesta Dei per Fran. cos, p. 424; and, I think, Hasselquist. St. Jerom in his Comment supposes the same, and that their usual progress is from the Southward.

their place. of residence they seem to tend to warmer climates. If that should be found to be the fact in those countries, their attempting

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pass from Tartary into Greece, or the Lesser Asia, had nothing wonderful in it; but as it is. generally observed they fly from the South in Barbary and other hot countries, there should be an intermediate country, in which the change in the temperature of the air may cause them in a warmer summer to fly northward, and in one that is cooler to go southward. Whether the North part of Syria may be of such kind of temperature I do not find any where mentioned.

The meeting with this observation of the Baron de Tott, gave, I have found, extreme pleasure to an ingenious and very learned clergyman, as a happy illustration of this place in Joel. It would give me, I confess, a more entire satisfaction, if I could find that in Syria they had passed southward, and so through Judea into the nearer part of Arabia, in some years; as in others they have come from Arabia, and gone to the northward.

After I had written the preceding paragraphs, I happened, in reviewing Niebuhr's description of Arabia on another account, to meet with his remarks on locusts, according to which they fly in different, and sometimes contrary directions, very much as the wind blows. The second time he saw them, they came to Cairo (in Egypt) by a S. W. wind, consequently

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from the desarts of Lybia. In November 1769, a great number of them passed off Dsjidda, by a westerly wind, consequently over the Red Sea, which is very broad there, and where many of them perished. In May, when the dates began to ripen, many of them arrived at Mokha commonly they return back again the next day, or else continue their flight to the mountains that lie eastward. On May 31, 1763, a great number of them passed over that city from the South, northward; and the first of June they went from the North to the South. Consequently they fly in all directions, and Niebuhr found them sometimes flying from the North to the South in Arabia. He afterwards informs us, that in the road from Mosul to Nissebîn, he found a large extent of ground, covered with young locusts, not bigger than bees, which might be called therefore the place where they had their nests. Now, according to this, if an East wind should have blown for some days, after they became capable of flying, they would have been brought into the North part of Syria, and a North wind would have drove them in the direction Joel mentions, or nearly so. From that place in Mesopotamia to Jerusalem, as he was informed, was only eight days' journey in a West direction, somewhat inclining to the South. This was the very direction that the Assyrian and Babylonian armies were wont to take, when they came into Judea. A similar description would do for • P. 148, 149.

P. 149.

both, as to the point of the compass to which they directed their march."

OBSERVATION XXVII.

Small Flies very troublesome, and often destructive, in Judea.

WE, perhaps, may be a good deal surprised to find, that the driving away of flies, should be thought by the inhabitants of the country about Ekron so important, that they should give a name to the idol they worshipped, expressive of that property; more especially when this was not the only quality ascribed to him, but it was supposed the power of predicting such momentous matters, as the continuance of the life of great princes, or their approaching death, did also belong to him: but

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Niebuhr, in the first of his three volumes of travels, gives us an account, in like manner, of the locusts sometimes coming from the Eastward to the South-west, in Arabia. 66 Never," says he, "have I seen them in such numbers as in the dry plain between Mount Sumâra and Jerim; for there are places where they might be swept up with the hands. We saw an Arab who had gathered a sack full, in order to dry them, and keep for his winter provision. When the rain ceases but a few hours, on the Westside of the mountain, there come such numerous legions from the side of the East, that the peasants of Mensil were obliged to drive them away from their fields, that they might not entirely destroy their fruits. . This pre

caution would have been useless in the country of Jerim, because they had established themselves there as in their proper abode, so long as that country is without rain." p. 320.

Baal-zebub (lord of the fly.)

y Sec 2 Kings i. 2.

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