It is not, however, as a rule, till after the grub or grubs have made their exit from the body that the locust dies, though it has drooped and become languid for some time. Of the vast swarms that darken the sky and descend upon the country, like a mantle, a very small proportion would seem to perish in this way, since everywhere the females may be seen drilling with their abdomens into the ground, preparatory to laying their eggs. The check upon their numbers, whatever it may be—and on the whole it must be very effective—supervenes, for the most part, at this early stage, before the egg is hatched, that is to say. ----- Footnote 17: Leland O. Howard, The Insect Book. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VI The burden of the locusts—Classical nonsense—Address to Mahomet—Locusts in Europe—Succumb to the English climate—Described by Darwin—Locusts in Africa—The wingless host do greatest damage—Hoppers and jumpers—“An army on the march.” LOCUSTS are insects famous in story, and when one reads about them in various entomological or other writings, one might imagine that the whole world had been doing little else, ever since it began, than play a losing match with these creatures. It is only after one has gone a little about the world, and lived for some time in regions noted as their head-quarters without seeing anything whatever of them, that one begins to doubt this view, and lean towards another one, viz. that they are fabulous animals; but truth, as in other cases where two extreme views are held, lies somewhere betwixt and between. The whole matter is this, that when one reads one narrative after another, with its burden of a darkened sun, devastated territories, strong winds, drownings in the sea, and pestilences engendered by innumerable carcases cast up along hundreds of miles of beach, the intervals, as well as the countries, between each one of these occurrences, are annihilated in the imagination, and the dates, if seen, are forgotten. Thus, to use the Kaffir expression—which has not yet lost its meaning for a civilised European—one sees everything red; locusts are very convincing—“you may almost hear the beating of their wings.”