Though these accounts are all interesting in their way, they none of them tell us much—or, indeed, anything—about the locusts themselves, for which reason I will supplement them with some which have that advantage, and are also, in some sort, a check or commentary upon the others. It is to be noted that, in all these, we hear only of flying locusts, and anyone would imagine by reading of them that it was by such, and no others, that all the damage was done. In Africa, however, and also in Cyprus—from which we may assume that it is the same elsewhere—the case is widely different. Writing evidently as a locust expert of the former country, Dr. Æneas Munro tells us that it is in their early wingless state—answering to the caterpillar one, though far less differentiated from the perfect form—that the most terrible, the overwhelming, injury is inflicted by these insects. Of the full-grown flying locusts he says, “To a certain extent, they do injure here and there, where they select to settle and feed; but they do not devour everything clean before them, like the army of the larval stage or jumpers.”[18] Of the latter and its doings _ab ovo_ we have the following interesting account: “When the tiny creatures issue from their nest they are of a greenish white or creamy colour, about an eighth of an inch in length,” and on the day that they do so “the very dust of the ground, which was so still before, now seems to waken into life. They begin to move by a process of twisting or rolling over one another, so that, for the first few days, they receive the name of twisters. Within eight or ten days, however, they can jump four or six inches, and at the age of three or four weeks a new characteristic makes its appearance. A desire to explore manifests itself, and in a surprising manner. The whole company moves in a body in one general direction, and more or less in a straight line, as if by one common instinct, without apparently having any recognised leader or commander,”[18] which is just the way, in my opinion, that rooks and starlings move.[19]