Yellow-winged Locust, Gastrimargus musicus

Plate 110, Figures 1-6. Australian Yellow-winged Locust, Oedipoda musica (now known as the Yellow-winged Locust, Gastrimargus musicus)

The wonderful migrations of countless millions of individuals of several species of this group-the Locusts-at certain times of the year, in various countries, especially North Africa, Arabia, India, China and even the warm parts of Europe, have been the subjects of records the most ancient, interesting, and important of all the popular references to insects. In most of the countries named, the flights or migrations are approximately from E. to W. (in Victoria they are generally from N. to S.) chiefly carried on by the action of strong winds blowing at the time, as the power of the wings for flight is not great, and the creatures seem to have little or no power of directing their flight, so that the great clouds of locusts raised, and mainly carried, by the wind are unable to avoid a river in their course; and as each individual's flight is for the most part short, the insects falling into such rivers are in many cases described as forming putrefying heaps of dead bodies many feet high and many miles long, creating a pestilence, while the flight itself often darkens the noon-day sky so that one could not see to read in the houses for hours. When they all alight, as they do at sundown, every trace of green vegetation disappears as if by magic, from the action of their voracious jaws, the places where they pass seeming as if burnt up-the Latin Locusta being derived (locis ustis) from the parched arid appearance wherever they have been. In nearly all ancient writers the popular or local names of Locusts have reference to their appearance in myriads, or their destructive voracity.

Very common everywhere in Victoria in the latter part of the summer.