New Britain herald., 1916-01-29
Description 0f Locnst
 Plague in Holy Land

it seemed as if the entire surface of the ground moved, producing most curious effect upon ones vision and causing dizziness, which in some was so severe as to product sensation not unlike seasickness. The same was also true when watching them undis- turbed on tree or field.
 "The younger locusts returned to Jerusalem, and for three or four days an incessant and intending stream filled the road from side to side, like mum berless troops marching on par ade, and in spite of the traffic at this junction. which to this city is like lower Broadway to New York, their ranks, although thinned, entered the ancient gateway and the New Beach. The moat around David's tower was so filled that the dry earth seem to be a living mass.
 "F'ortunately by the time these young broods had matched the grain crops were too far advanced to be much hurt. The vineyards and or cral> were the places at which the locust naturally halted for the rapid ity of their marchings and the ire quency of their stops seemed to De regulated by the amount of forage encountered.
 "Once entering a vineyard, the sprawling vines would in the shortest time be nothing but bare bark, the long dark stem lying flat on the ground, much resembling snakes. F1g leaves perhaps of all things best suit cd their taste and when once a tree fell a prey to them the ground about would be literally layers deep, ana the trunks so covered with craWlers as to make it bright yellow color' They first ate tho tender parts, leaV- ing a perfect skeleton of the large broad leaves but soon these, too, were devoured, and usually after one day work the tree stood anked of any leaves with nothing but the nara unripe fruit protruding stiffly rom the branches When the da1ntler morsels were gone the bark was eaten off the young top-most branches which after exposure to the sum- hleached snow-wnite. Then, seem- ingly out of malice, they would gna" off small limbs, perhaps to get at the pith within. The effect thus caused was a weird one, resembling white candles on a dried-up Christmas tree'
 "LiIzewise were destroyed the veg etabIe and truck gardens in the plalns and hills, to say nothing of the abso- l,1te annihilation of the grape, and or many thousands of acres of native corn, still but few inches tall, were eaten to the ground In fact, noun ing escaped their ravages except the orange gardens at Jaffa, due to the heavy sea breezes and strenuous hu- man efforts, while those of the sub- urbs were entirely eaten.
 "Tn Nazareth it required several hundred men to sweep the locust to- oe+her and to destroy them, and many donkevs to carry away to nearby fields the miniature carcasses. Stores were closed and some houses aban- doned for there 1t seemed as if the To- custs were even more active than III ether towns. During the Egyptian ,,lague we find Moses announcing the locust scourage in terms of which our present experience is such an exact d,p1icate, as follows: Behold tomor- row will I bring the locusts into thy coasts :and they shall cover the face or the earth,-and they shall eat the res idue of that which is escaped-every green tree which groweth. And they shall fill thy houses, and the houses of thv servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians