Locusts have been known to travel as far as sixty miles out to sea. It
is a curious fact, that, they avoid for several years a province
where large quantities of their number have been swallowed up and
destroyed by an earthquake.
Aside from their destroying growing-crops, these insects are perfectly
harmless; little children play with them, and older people eat them,
fried locust being esteemed a great delicacy by the poor-class
natives. I can vouch for one instance in which the inhabitants of a
certain village offered to pay the parish priest if he would say mass
for the continuance of this luxury. The scourge is thus a terror to
the planter, but a boon to his poor laborers.
The Chief Nuisances: Mosquitoes and Ants.
To repeat: Among the chief nuisances in the Philippines are mosquitoes
and ants. The ordinary bed is a hemp mat, without sheets, but never
without ample mosquito nets, in the absence of which sleep would be
banished. The white ants are indeed formidable; not like the locusts,
feeding on green things growing, but destroying dry wood and vegetable
fibre, wherever found. They can literally devour a house; and I have
been gravely told that even the surface of iron is not safe from
their ravages.
Many anecdotes are extant concerning the silent, hidden, and rapid
ravages of these aggressive insects, working entirely out of sight, yet
finding their way by a sure instinct to anything that will serve them
for food. In one aggravating instance, happening in 1838, the priests
of a certain town had packed away, in a trunk of narra-wood, the
various articles used in the service of the mass, including the robes,
priests' garments, and so forth. The following day, March 19th, they
were taken out and used, and in the evening restored to the trunk. On
the 20th some dirt was seen near this receptacle, and it was opened. To
the horror of all the priests, their sacred vestments had vanished;
nothing was left of them but a layer of dust and the gold and silver
lace, this being tarnished by a filthy deposit. Yet not an ant was to
be found in the trunk, nor in any part of the church; and five days
elapsed before it was discovered how they had reached their prey. It
was then found that they had eaten through a beam six inches thick,
making a small hole, through which they obtained access to the trunk.
Blind though they are, their other senses seem to be remarkably
developed. They work from underground, never appearing at the surface,
and will excavate a piece of furniture until it is a mere shell, and
falls at a touch, yet not show the least vestige of a tunnel outside.
One ignorant servant-girl had lent her earnings, in hard silver
dollars, to a relative, and on asking to be repaid was gravely informed
that the money no longer existed--the white ants had eaten it. This
preposterous story was believed by the girl, who was ready to accept
any marvel that the white ants were credited with.
STRUGGLE OF THE FILIPINOS FOR LIBERTY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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