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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

CYPRUS LOCUSTS.
ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.
A FEW NOTES ON PERSIAN ART.
COLONEL REDGRAVE’S LEGACY.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
THE HAUNTED BRIDGE.
FAIRYLAND IN MIDSUMMER.



No. 51.—Vol. I.

Priced.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1884.


CYPRUS LOCUSTS.

BY A DWELLER IN THE EAST.

Everybody who has read anything about theEast must be acquainted with the plague oflocusts. I distinctly remember that when a smallboy I was more impressed by the accounts of theenormous extent of their flocks than with anythingelse my books could tell me. There wasto me something appalling, and at the same timeattractive, in the swarms stretching for miles,which obscured the sun, and devoured everythinggreen wherever they settled. It is difficult, ifnot impossible, for any one brought up in ourtemperate regions to realise such a state of things.We hear, to be sure, of damage done to crops athome; just now, it is sparrows; not very longsince it was game; next year it may be somethingelse; but in all these cases it is simply damage—perhapsone per cent., or five per cent., or tenper cent. But with locusts it means not damage,but destruction, or, better still, annihilation ofthe crop. Fancy an English farmer turning outafter breakfast and admiring his six-acre fieldof wheat, deliciously green, about two feet high.Fancy him, too, coming home to dinner at noonand seeing this same field as bare as his hand.This is no exaggeration, but a plain matter-of-factillustration of what may be seen any springwhere these abominable insects abound. Onceseen, it can never be forgotten.

I have had my recollection of these creaturesand their ways revived by a parliamentary paperentitled, ‘Report of the Locust Campaign of 1884,by Mr S. Brown, Government Engineer, Cyprus.’It gives the results of the measures employed tostay the plague to which the island has for agesbeen subject; and so far it is satisfactory enough.The locusts have been put down, and for mostpeople that is the chief point. I notice that theTimes has devoted about half a column to thepaper, but has contented itself with simply copyingthe salient points, the writer evidentlyknowing nothing of the subject. The paperitself presupposes a knowledge of a certain nature,which no one except those who are acquaintedwith the district can be expected to possess. Iventure, therefore, to supply the informationnec

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