AN INSECT PLAGUE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 4, 5 July 1928, Page 18

AN INSECT PLAGUE

INFLUX OF GRASSHOPPERS IN THE PELOPONNESE It is reported that to the other tribulations of the Corinthians has been added a. plague of locusts, writes Dilys Powell in the "Daily Telegraph." I do not know if these are the genuine Israelitish locusts come hot-wing from Egypt, or if they are nothing more than the largo crimson-limbed grasshoppers which cloud the summer air in Greece. Of the latter there certainly was a plague in the Peloponnese last year. Everywhere their squadrons wheeled and fluttered iv the sun. They sprang in brown and scarlet jets from the ground; they squatted by the roadside and jumped away iv a showerl of dust beneath your feet; they leaped on to the backs of the mules and sunned themselves; they passed luxurious nights in the village houses. And everywhere they devoured the vines. The peasants were helpless. They could not destroy the pest; they were not prepared; never, they said, had there been such a plague before. Looking from the windows of the train as it crawled across the fiery plains, you were puzzled at first by these flights of insects with their red whirring wings, tossed suddenly into the air like a handful of leaves, and settling again into a sinister quiet. Then, perhaps, one of them would blunder in through the open window and perch on your shoulder, displaying his wingcases and his prodigious jumping-legs, and you knew him for what he was. As a rule he did not arrive alone. On the way down from Megaspelaeon to Diakophto by the rack-and-piniou railway the train was full of grusshoppers. They came flying in, dozens of them, to settle on a sleeve or cling grotesquely to the brim of a hat; the peasant women shook them from their black head-shawls and fliing them vindictively out of the windows. Not until we were past the northern barrier of Arcadia were we rid of the creatures. Then, suddenly, as we came out into the coastal plain, they were gone; the mountains which had once served to keep the invader out of Arcadia served also to keep the grasshopper in Arcadia. This journey down to the coast by the rack-and-pinion railway is one of the most spectacular in Greece. The train now lowers itself into somo cavernous tunnel, now emerges into a gorge of red and orange rocks climbing until their crests are lost to sight. Below, the stream leaps and flashes, watering here and there a fig-tree' or a clump of wil-low-herb. But the Greeks, living for ever amidst the triumphs of Nature, pay little heed. One man had brought with him a molancholy-voiced instrument, a kind of flute, which be played incessantly, much to his own satisfaction. Another was in charge of a goat—a common passenger. The animal was obviously used 'to railway travelling, and made no complaints.. I think there were a few hens as well. At a wayside station most of the passengers tumbled out helter-skelter to stretch their legs and talk to the sta : tionmaster. This gentleman and his family had apparently decided that it was too hot to sleep indoors; they" were still in bed on the platform. The fluteplayer took this opportunity to seize a pitcher of water and pour it down his flute. The water, not unnaturally, spurted out from every hole and drenched the people in bod. "It doesn't matter!" they cried, in chorus. But still the grasshoppers flickered through the air,'still they landed heavily on tho dusty ground. And I : suppose they are still at it.