THE LOCUST HORROR.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4827, 30 March 1925, Page 3

THE LOCUST HORROR.

DESTRUCTION TO COUNTRYSIDE. EVERYTHING GREE— EATEN UP. A plague of locusts hat, been adding recently to the trouble of the Souta African farmer. The visitation (says Christopher Beck, in the Daily Mail) usually occurs during a long drought; the swarm devours every green thing, from the grass and farm crops to the leaves of the trees. But. this is only a, part of the mischief done by these, pestilent insects, for they are ;n themselves the foulest and most abominable creatures under the sun. However great the heat, every window must, be closed, for otherwise the swarm will speedily render any room uninhabitable, fouling it beyond belief, Any open well must be most carefully covered, for if this is not done the bodies of the locusts, drowned by the thousand, will rapidly putrify ana poison the water. A well thus infected cannot be used again until it has been pumped out and thoroughly cleansed. A big swarm of locusts will not leave a trace of green in all the countrywide, but even when the invasion is not on so large a scale the grass that remains is so poisoned that horses will rather starve.’ than touch it.

The only domestic creatures that appear to welcome a visitatoin of locusts are the poultry, who gobble them down by the score and fatten rapidly on the diet. This is no help to the farmer, but rather a curse, for there is something in the insect which taints the flesh of the ducks and chickens, and makes them quite unfit for human food. More than this, even their eggs are affected. Open an egg laid by a hen that has been feeding on locusts and you will find that the yolk is quite red, while the flavour of the egg itself is so strong that’no one but a negro will, cat it. Pigs will eat locusts; and here again the effect is disastrous, for, weeks later, when killed, the pork is found to be tainted.