To accompany this piece of satire, the following suits well:
A Chinese author, quoted by Rev. Thomas Smith, observes, that Locusts never appear in China but when great floods are followed by a very dry season; and that it is his opinion that they are hatched by the sun from the spawn of fish left by the waters on the ground![387]
So far the history of the Locust has been but a series of the greatest calamities which human nature has suffered--famine, pestilence, and death. No wonder that, in all ages and times, these insects have so deeply impressed the imagination, that almost all people have looked on them with superstitious horror. We have shown how that their devastations have entered into the history of nations. Their effigies, too, like those of other conquerors of the earth, have been perpetuated in coins.
We are the army of the great God, and we lay ninety-and-nine eggs; were the hundredth put forth, the world would be ours--such is the speech the Arabs put into the mouth of the Locust. And such is the feeling the Arabs entertain of this insect, that they give it a remarkable pedigree, and the following description of its person: It has the head of the horse, the horns of the stag, the eye of the elephant, the neck of the ox, the breast of the lion, the body of the scorpion, the hip of the camel, the legs of the stork, the wings of the eagle, and the tail of the dragon.[388]
The Mohammedans say, that after God had created man from clay, of that which was left he made the Locust: and in utter despair, they look upon this devastating scourge as a just chastisement from heaven for their or their nation's sins, or as directed by that fatality in which they all believe.[389]
The wings of some Locusts being spotted, were thought by many to be leaves from the book of fate, in which letters announcing the destiny of nations were to be read. Paul Jetzote, professor of Greek literature at the Gymnasium of Stettin, wrote a work on the meaning of three of these letters, which were, according to him, to be seen on the wings of those Locusts which visited Silesia in 1712. These letters were B. E. S., and formed the initials of the Latin words "Bella Erunt Sæva," or "Babel Est Solitudo;" also the German words, "Bedeutet Erschreckliche Schlacten," portending frightful battles, "Bedeutet und Erfreuliche Siege," portending happy victories. There are Greek and Hebrew sentences likewise, in which, no doubt, the professor showed as much learning, judgment, and spirit of prophecy as in those already quoted.[390]