CHAPTER XIX. LOCUSTS. A RECENT traveller in the South of Russia gives the following account of a swarm of Locusts which he witnessed : :-- "During the summer," writes Dr. Lee, "I visited Kief and the greater part of the country extending between the Dnieper and Dniester, which was at that time suffering from the ravages of locusts. On the 8th of July, 1825, I rode with Baron Franc a distance of five versts† from Biala Cerkiew to see the locusts. We found upwards of 300 peasants engaged in destroying them. They had dug a ditch across the steppe, t three miles long, and about two feet in depth. There were millions of these insects upon the ground: they were said to move with peculiar vivacity with the south-wind and when the sun was shining, and to travel only during the day. Boys and girls were stationed along the opposite margin of the ditch to prevent the locusts from crawling up and passing to the other side. In this trench there were deep holes dug, into which the locusts were swept, and slaves were raising them from these, with wooden spades, into sacks held by others. many of these measures were required daily from each band of slaves upon the steppe; and from the dull, sluggish, and inert manner in which they worked, it did not appear to me that they had a very heavy task to perform. On the 10th of July I visited the place again, and though vast numbers of the locusts had So *The Last Days of Alexander, and the First Days of Nicholas,' by Robert Lee, M.D., F.R.S., p. 14. Verst is a Russian measure of length, equal to about half an English mile. Steppes.] A Russian name for the vast plains in the South of Russia. been destroyed, myriads remained. Upwards of 400 peasants were now at work. A more wretched, illclothed, miserable race I never saw; lodging in holes in the ground, worse covered than our common vagrants and beggars; and men were behind them with whips, which I saw used. I rode back in a state of melancholy, hoping and praying fervently that the following prediction of the poet might soon be fulfilled: "Where barbarous hordes on Scythian mountains roam, "Swarms of locusts appeared in the Crimea in 1819, and were there in 1823. In that year they completely devoured the crops, and spread westward as far as Bessarabia, and to the north upwards of 300 miles from the seacoast; in the autumn of 1824 their eggs had Deen deposited in the earth, not only in this fertile district, but throughout the whole tract of country extending eastward from the Dnieper towards the Don to the Caucasus. During the winter I had seen some of their ova dug out of the earth, when they presented the appearance of clusters of small yellow sacs or bags. In the month of May the young ones began to issue from the ground in myriads, at which time they did not exceed the fifth part of an inch in length, and could only crawl along the surface. In a few weeks they had greatly enlarged, and could leap considerable distances, like grasshoppers. By the end of June they were able to fly a short distance, and before the end of July they mounted high into the air, and took long flights. At first they were of a blackish hue, but they after ards became of a clear brown colour, with wings of grey or rosy red. In some places they covered the ground * Siber, i.e. Siberia. † Ova.] Eggs. completely, and were in a state of rest; but in others they were going slowly before the breeze, and resembled at a distance a sheet of gently-flowing water. Around Novomirgorod, in travelling from Biala Cerkiew "near Kief, to Odessa, the road was thickly covered with them, and as our carriage approached, they rose with a peculiar rattling noise, and in such numbers that they filled the air like flakes of snow in a storm. They swarmed in the streets of Odessa, in the vineyards, and on the surrounding steppe at the beginning of August, and masses of the dead bodies of those drowned in the sea covered the shore. "There were everywhere two distinct varieties of these insects, one about three inches long, and the other half that length. There was a third variety, of a green colour, but it was extremely rare, and in some places absent. In the neighbourhood of Odessa on the steppe, I observed vast numbers of a peculiar species of sphex, or ichneumon-fly,* employed in killing or burying the locusts. The fly insidiously sprung upon the locust, winding its long and powerful legs around the body, so that the victim could not expand its wings and escape. 66 'When exhausted with fruitless efforts to fly, the sphex pressed around the neck of the locust the strong nippers with which its mouth is furnished, and thrusting the dart, with which it is also provided, between the head and body, in a few seconds deprived the locust of life. This dart I found to consist of two sharp spears with a small tube between them, but whether connected * The Ichneumon-fly is a kind of fly which deposits its eggs in the bodies of caterpillars. This does not kill the caterpillar, but after the caterpillar becomes a chrysalis, the eggs of the ichneumon-fly are hatched, and the chrysalis is destroyed. There are several species of this kind of fly in England, and they are very serviceable in destroying caterpillars. Those who have read of the ichneumon must distinguish it from the ichneumon-fly. The ichneumon is an Egyptian animal, resembling a weasel, which preys upon smaller animals, and devours crocodiles' eggs. or not with a poisonous sac I did not ascertain. The fly remained for some time attached to the body of the locust after it was dead, probably for the purpose of depositing its ova within it. The sphex afterwards dragged the locust into a small grave it had previously dug in the ground for its reception, and covered it carefully with earth. The ultimate extinction of the locusts here would obviously be effected by this means, if none other were provided by nature for the purpose. The locusts, I was informed some years after, had entirely disappeared from these extensive steppes.' OBS. In reading this Lesson, the Map of Russia should be carefully consulted. CHAPTER XX. SQUIRRELS. THESE pretty little creatures inhabit almost every country and climate. Most people are familiar with the elegant form of the English wood-squirrel, one species among many of its tribe. Other squirrels resemble, but are not altogether like it, though naturalists suppose them all to be sprung from one stock, the variations in their appearance resulting from the difference of climate and condition of life. Our English wood-squirrels build their nests of twigs, dry leaves, and moss, in the forks of old trees, away from the haunts of man, and these materials are bound together in such a manner as to resist the most violent storms. The nest, large as it is, has only a small opening, just sufficiently large to admit the little animal. It has a projecting shelf above the entrance, which prevents the rain from penetrating. Small as it is at the aperture, it is roomy and commodious; and here the little mother brings forth her young. . This squirrel does not store its food in the nest, but in holes of the tree which it has selected for its homeor, failing these, in holes in the ground, which it remembers in its need. It is a well-known fact that oaks, apparently of spontaneous growth, are planted by squirrels, who forget or do not need all the store of acorns which they have buried. The summer food of the English squirrel is the surface of the young pinecones, the young shoots and buds of various trees; and in autumn, nuts, filberts, and acorns, to which must be added (on the authority of a writer in Science Gossip for June, 1866) various fungi. The writer states, that while strolling in a plantation of Scotch firs, near the Wrekin, in 1864, he noticed a squirrel seated on its haunches on a limb of a wych-elm, and holding between its paws a fungus by the stem. A piece of rotten wood thrown against the branch disturbed the little creature, and it dropped the dainty morsel to the ground; enough of the pileus remained to show that it had been a full-grown specimen of the red Russola; and a few yards farther on, the writer stumbled on half a-dozen of the same species, their crimson caps resembling in the distance so many patches of blood of the size of a crown-piece, and halfhidden in the stubbly grass. Another writer on the subject of squirrels also confirms the fact of their propensity for eating fungi. The Virginian squirrel is a very pretty creature. Its body and limbs are longer than those of its English cousin; it is, indeed, as large as a good-sized rabbit. This is the little animal which furnishes the grey fur for ladies' muffs; the tail is covered with long grey hair, mingled with white and black towards the tip. This species is found in Sweden, where it changes its colour to a dirty white in the winter. The Carolina squirrel is black, but is singularly tipped with white at its extremities. The Barbary species, of which there are several |