{297}Locusts are able to travel considerable distances, though how far is quite uncertain. Accounts vary as to their moving by night. It has, however, been recently proved that they do travel at night, but it is not ascertained how long they can remain in the air without descending. The ocean is undoubtedly a source of destruction to many swarms; nevertheless, they traverse seas of considerable width. They have been known to reach the Balearic Islands, and Scudder gives[228] a well-authenticated case of the occurrence of a swarm at sea. On the 2nd of November 1865 a ship on the voyage from Bordeaux to Boston, when 1200 miles from the nearest land, was invaded by a swarm of locusts, the air and the sails of the ship being filled with them for two days. The species proved to be _Acridium_ (_Schistocerca_) _peregrinum_. This is an extraordinary case, for locusts do not fly with rapidity, being, indeed, as we have remarked, chiefly carried by the wind. Possibly some species may occasionally rest on the water at night, proceeding somewhat after the fashion of the "Voetgangers" when passing over rivers as described by Mrs. Barber. In Sir Hans Sloane's history of Jamaica an account of an occurrence of this kind is given on the authority of Colonel Needham, who states that in 1649 locusts devastated the island of Tenerife, that they were seen to come from Africa when the wind was blowing thence, that they flew as far as they could, then alighted on the water, one on the other, till they made a heap as big as the greatest ship, and that the next day, being refreshed by the sun, they took flight again and landed in clouds at Tenerife. De Saussure says[229] that the great oceans are, as a rule, impassable barriers, and that not a species of the tribe Oedipodides has passed from the Old World to the New. It is, however, possible that _Acridium peregrinum_, of the tribe Acridiides, may have originally been an inhabitant of America, and have passed from thence to the Old World. {298}[Illustration: FIG. 177.—European migratory locust, _Pachytylus cinerascens_ ♀.]