LOCUST
486
LOCUST
salt, and adding butter : he found tliem excellent. How strange, then, nay, " how idle," to quote the words of Kirby and Spence {Entom. i, 305), " was the controversy concerning the locusts which formed part of the sus- tenance of John the Baptist, . . . and how apt even learned men are to per- plex a plain question from ignorance of the customs of other coimtries!" They are even an extensive article of commerce (Sparman's Voyage, i, 367, etc.). Diodorus Siculus mentions a peojjle of Ethiopia who were so fond of eating them that they were called A criJophagi, " eaters of locusts" (xxiv, 3). Whole armies have been relieved by them when in danger of perishing (Porphyrins, De Absiinentia Carnis). We learn from Aristophanes and Aris- totle that they were eaten by the in- habitants of Greece (Aristoph. Achar-
^''"W '"'"■ ^^^^' ^^^~' ^^^^''" ^™'^-'-' Aristotle, "^rj^M* Hist. A nim. v, 30, where he speaks of
them as delicacies). (See below, III.) Dried Locusts on That they were eaten in a preserved rods borne in state by the ancient Assyrians is evi- pr.)cession (On j ,t f^ ^ j^g monuments (Layard, sculptures fi-om „ , , ,„ ,,^„, ^ •' '
K o u y u n j i k, ^"O; ««« ^ w. p. 289). now ill the Bi-it- Birds also eagerly devour them ish Mnsenm.) (Russell, Natural History of Aleppo, p. 1'27 ; Yolney, Travels, i, 237 ; Kitto's Physical History of Pal. p. 410). The locust-bird referred to by travel- lers, and which the Arabs call smurmur, is no doubt, from Dr. Kitto's description, the "rose-colored starling," Pastor roseiis. The Kev. H. B. Tristram saw one speci- men in the orange-groves at Jaffa in the spring of 1858,
.^m.
The Ssniurmur, or Locust-eating Bud
l)Ut makes no allusion to its devouring locusts. Dr. Kitto in one place (p. 410) says the locust-bird is about the size of a starling ; in another place (p. 420) he com- pares it in size to a swallow. The bird is about eiglit inches and a half in length. Yarrell (British Birds, ii, 51, 2d ed.) says "it is held sacred at Aleppo because it feeds on the locust;" and Col. Sykes bears testimony to the immense flocks in which they fly. He says (Cata- loffiie of the Birds of Dnkhnn) "they darken the air by their numbers . . . forty Oi' fifty liave been killed at "a shot." But he says " they prove a calamity to the hus- bandman, as they are as destructive as locusts, and not much less numerous."
Tlie great tliglits of locusts occur only every fourth or fifth season. Those locusts which come in the first instance only fix on trees, and do not destroy grain: it is the young, before thej- are able to Hy, %vhich are chiefly injurious to the crops. Nor do all the species feed upon vegetables ; one, comprehending many vari- eties, the truxalis, according to some authorities, feeds upon insects. Latreille says^the house-cricket will do so. "Locusts," remarks a very sensible tourist, "seem to devour not so much from a ravenous appetite as from a rage for destroying." Destruction, therefore, and not food, is the chief impulse of their devastations, and in
this consists their utility; they are, in fact, omnivo- rous. The most poisonous plants are indifferent to them ; they wiU prey even upon the crowfoot, whose causticity bums the very hides of beasts. They simply consume everythiny without jircdilection, vegetable mat- ter, linen, woollen, silk, leather, etc. ; and I'liny does not exaggerate when he says, "Fores quocjue tectorum," " and even the doors of houses" (xi, 29), for they have been known to consume the very varnish of furniture. They reduce everything indiscriminately to shreds, which become manure. It might serve to mitigate popidar misapprehensions on the subject to consider what would have been the consequence if locusts had been carnivorous like wasps. All terrestrial beings, in such a case, not excluding man himself, would have be- come their victims. There are, no doubt, many things respecting them yet unlinown to us which would stiU further justify the belief that this, like "every" other " work of God, is good" — benevolent upon the whole (see Dillon's Ti-av, in Spain, p. 256, etc., London, 1780, 4to).
in. The general references to locusts in the Scrip- tures are well collected by Jahn {Bibl.Archaol. § 23), while Wemyss gives many of the symbolical apjilica- tions of this creature {Claris Symholica, s. v.). It is well known that locusts live in a republic like ants. Agur, the son of Jakeh, correctly says, " The locusts have no king." But Mr. Home gives them one {Introduction, etc., 1839, iii, 76), and Dr. Harris speaks of their having " a leader whose motions they invariably observe" {Xat. Hist, of the Bible, London, 1825). See this notion re- futed by Kirby and Spence (ii, 16), and even by Moufi'et {Theat. Insect, p. 122, Lond. 1034). It is also worthy of remark that no Hebrew root has ever been offered fa- voring this idea. Our translation (Nah. iii, 17) repre- sents locusts, "great grasshoppers," as "camping in the Ifldges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth as fleeing away." Here the locust, gob, is undoubtedly spoken of as a perfect insect, able to fly, and as it is well known that at evening the locusts descend from their flights and form camps for the night, may not the cold day mean the cold portion of the daj', i. e. the niglit, so remarkable for its coldness in the East, the word DTi being used here, as it often is, in a comprehensive sense, like the Gr. ypipa and Lat. dies ? Gesenius suggests that rms, "hedges," should here be understood like the Gr. a'lpaaui, shrubs, brushwood, etc. (See above, I, 2.) With regard to the description in Joel (chap, ii), it is considered by many learned writers as a figurative representation of the ravages of an invading " army" of human beings, as in Rev. ix, 2-12, rather tlian a literal account, since such a devastation would hardly, they tliink, have escaped notice in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Some have abandoned all attempt at a lit- eral interpretation of Lev. xi, 22, and understand by the four species of locusts there mentioned, Shalmaneser, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, and the Komans. Theodo- ret explains them as the four Assyrian kings, Tiglath- pileser, Shalmaneser, Sennacherilj, and Nebuchadnezzar ; and Abarbanel, of the four kingdoms inimical to the Jews, viz. the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Ko- mans (Pococke's H'or/iVt, i, 214, etc., Lond. 1740; Kosen- m tiller. Scholia in Joel. c. i).