“Having lived near a month in this manner, like a μυριοστομον ξιφος[a], or _sword with ten thousand edges_, to which they have been compared, upon the ruin and destruction of every vegetable substance that came in their way, they arrived at their full growth, and threw off their nympha-state, by casting their outward skin. To prepare themselves for this change, they clung by their hinder feet to some bush, twig, or corner of a stone, and immediately, by using an undulating motion, their heads would first break out, and then the rest of their bodies. The whole transformation was performed in seven or eight minutes; after which they lay for a small time in a torpid, and seemingly languishing, condition; but as soon as the sun and the air had hardened their wings, by drying up the moisture that remained upon them, after casting their sloughs, they re-assumed their former voracity, with an addition both of strength and agility. Yet they continued not long in this state before they were entirely dispersed, as their parents were before, after they had laid their eggs; and as the direction of the marches and the flights of them both was always to the northward, and not having strength, as they have sometimes had, to reach the opposite shores of Italy, France, or Spain, it is probable they perished in the sea; a grave which, according to these people, they have in common with other winged creatures.”] [Footnote a: Psidias apud Boch. Hieroz. par. ii. p. 441.] [Footnote 22: Diodorus has given a very interesting description of the mode of catching locusts practised by the Acridophagi (or locust-eaters), as well as of the dreadful consequences produced by a too frequent use of them as articles of food.] [Footnote 23: The time when we observed the swarm of locusts alluded to above, was in the latter end of November; their course, as Dr. Shaw has remarked, was, however, invariably towards the sea, in which myriads of them were lost; and we have never seen a single instance, on other occasions, where they did not take that direction, however far they might have been inland.] [Footnote 24: Nat. Hist. lib. xi. c. 29.] [Illustration: Engraved from a Drawing taken on the spot by H. Beechey. SOLITARY PALM TREE AT ARAR. REMARKABLE AS BEING THE ONLY TREE FOUND IN THE LYOTIS. _Published March 1827, by John Murray, London._] [Illustration: Engraved from a Drawing taken on the spot by H. Beechey. FORMIDABLE APPEARANCE OF THE COAST AT ZAFFRAN. _Published March 1827, by John Murray, London._] CHAPTER VI.