Two days before our departure from Mesurata, a strong scirocco wind set in, and brought such myriads of locusts, that the air was literary darkened by them. The inhabitants in consequence remained out all night, keeping up a continued shouting and firing of muskets and pistols, to prevent them from settling on the gardens and cultivated lands. They who were not engaged in this occupation, employed themselves in collecting the locusts which had been beaten down, and carrying them off in baskets as articles of provision: so great was the quantity collected on this occasion, that we observed many asses, heavily laden with these insects, driven into the town and the neighbouring villages. The destruction occasioned by a large swarm of locusts can scarcely be imagined by those who have not witnessed it; and the account which we subjoin of them, extracted from Shaw, may not perhaps be unacceptable to our readers[21]. After this interesting description, the Doctor proceeds to observe—“The locust, I conjecture, was the _noisome beast_, or the _pernicious destructive animal_, as the original words may be interpreted, which, with the _sword_, the _famine_, and the _pestilence_, made the _four sore judgments_ that were threatened against Jerusalem, Ezek. xiv. 21.” “The Jews were allowed to eat them; and indeed when sprinkled with salt, and fried, they are not unlike in taste to our fresh-water cray-fish.” “The Acridophagi[22], no doubt, were fond of eating them; in so much as they received their name from thence.”—He further adds—“The ακριδες, which St. John the Baptist fed upon in the wilderness, were properly locusts; and provided they appeared in the holy land during the spring, as they did in Barbary, it may be presumed that St. John entered upon his mission, and that _the day of his shewing himself unto Israel_ (Luke i. 20) was at that season[23].” Pliny has informed us that the locusts lay their eggs in autumn, which remain all the winter in the fissures of the earth, and come forth in the shape of locusts in the following spring; being, at first, without legs, and obliged to creep upon their wings. He tells us that they invariably choose tracts of level country in which to deposit their eggs, as being most full of crevices and fissures, and hence, if it chance to be a rainy season, the eggs never come to perfection; but, on the contrary, if the early part of the year should be dry, vast numbers of these insects may be expected in the summer ensuing.