TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 109 After this interesting description, the Doctor proceeds to observe “ The locust, I conjecture, was the noisome beast, or the pernicious destructive animal, as the original words may be interpreted, which, with the sivord, the famine, and the pestilence, made the four sore judgments that were threatened against Jerusalem, Ezek. xiv. 21.

The Jews were allowed to eat them; and indeed when sprinkled with salt, and fried, they are not unlike in taste to our fresh-water cray-fish.

The Acridophagi* no doubt, were fond of eating them; in so t Joel (ii. 3,) to a great army ; who furthei* observes, that the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness.

Having lived near a month in this manner, like a //.etoaroixov or sword with ten thousand edges, to which they have been compared, upon the ruin and destruction of every vegetable substance that came in their way, they arrived at their full growth, and threw off their nympha-state, by casting their outward skin. To prepare themselves for this change, they clung by their hinder feet to some bush, twig, or corner of a stone, and immediately, by using an undulating motion, their heads would first break out, and then the rest of their bodies. The whole transformation was performed in seven or eight minutes ; after which they lay for a small time in a torpid, and seemingly languishing, condition ; but as soon as the sun and the air had hardened their wings, by drying up the moisture that remained upon them, after casting their sloughs, they re-assumed their former voracity, with an addition both of strength and agility. Yet they continued not long in this state before they were entirely dispersed, as their parents were before, after they had laid their eggs ; and as the direction of the marches and the flights of them both was always to the northward, and not having strength, as they have sometimes had, to reach the opposite shores of Italy, France, or Spain, it is probable they perished in the sea ; a grave which, according to these people, they have in common with other winged creatures.”

* Diodorus has given a very interesting description of the mode of catching locusts practised by the Acridophagi (or locust-eaters), as well as of the dreadful consequences produced by a too frequent use of them as articles of food.

Psidias apiid Boch. Hieroz, par. ii. p. 411.