A most frequent, and almost annual calamity to Paraguay are the locusts, which are horrible to the sight and of immense size, being longer than a man's middle finger. When an infinite swarm of them approaches, a terrible darkness breaks from the farthest horizon, and you would swear that a black cloud pregnant with rain, wind, and lightning was drawing nigh. My Abipones, on such occasions, often snatched up arms, and placed themselves in battle array; for the locusts, beheld from a distance, looked like a cloud of dust stirred up by a troop of hostile savages. Wherever the locusts settle, they deprive the fields of their productions, the trees of their leaves, the plain of grass, and men and cattle of food; while the numerous offspring which they leave behind continue the devastation to another year, and create further misery. The army of locusts is prevented from flying to the ground, and feeding in the fields sowed with various kinds of grain, by the sound of drums, the shouting of voices, the firing of guns, and continual rustling of boughs in the air; if these methods fail of driving them away, all the men in the Guarany towns are employed in collecting and killing them. In one day we have often with pleasure beheld many bushels full of these insects, and have condemned them either to the fire or the water. The Abipones had rather eat locusts than drown or burn them; on which account, as they are flying, they knock them down to the ground with long sticks, roast them at the fire on the same, or on spits, and devour them with as much avidity as we do partridges or beccaficos, rejecting however the males. It has been my intention to treat here of all the noxious insects that occasion death, disease, or damage: but what a field should I have, were I also to describe the harmless ones both of the land and water. Good Heavens! what an abundance is there of flies, worms, bees, hornets, drones, and grasshoppers! What an immense diversity of glow-worms, shining here and there by night like stars! Some, which are about the size of a grass-worm, by moving their wings, others from their eyes alone, emit a light strong enough for one to read by. Some glow only behind, others in every part of their bodies. Wood, reeds, leaves, and roots of plants, when putrefied, scatter at night, particularly in moist places, a green, red, yellow, or blue radiance, resembling diamonds, emeralds, chrysolites, rubies, &c. This was a nightly spectacle to us in the woods between the rivers Acaray̆ and Monday̆. I carried some rubbish which I had observed to glitter in this manner, to my town, where it shone as long as it continued moist; when wetted, it regained its former splendour, which, however, ceased at last, in spite of fresh supplies of water. I never perceived phosphoric lights of this nature in any other part of Paraguay. Innumerable butterflies, of a beautiful variety of colours, adorn the sides of the