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There is a story of a grain of hemp-seed that contained all the body-linen of a princess. Here we have something even more astonishing. The hemp-seed of the story needed long years to germinate, to multiply, and at last to give the quantity of hemp required for the trousseau of a princess; but the germ of the locust's wing has expanded to a magnificent sail in a few short hours.
The wings and elytra stand erect over the locust's back like an immense set of sails; at first colourless, then of a tender green, like the freshly expanded wings of the Cigale. I am amazed at their expanse when I think of the miserable stumps from which they have expanded. How did so much material contrive to occupy so little space?
The genesis of living creatures offers to our contemplation an infinity of wonders far greater than this matter of a locust's wing; but in general they pass unperceived, obscured as they are by the veil of time. Time, in the deliberation of mysteries, deprives us of the most astonishing of spectacles except our spirits be endowed with a tenacious patience.
Nevertheless, by about the hour of midnight they reached the rock shaped like a locust's head, which stood in the wildest and most inaccessible part of the mountain, and masked the entrance to a strongly-guarded cave. Here Weng suffered himself to be blindfolded, and being led forward he was taken into the innermost council.
"I have done with the outer things." The guide pointed to a rock, shaped like a locust's head, which marked the highest point of the steep mountain before them. Soon the fertile lowlands ended and they passed beyond the limit of the inhabitable region.
The insect will show him that which is hidden from our curiosity by extreme deliberation in the germinating seed, the opening leaf, and the budding flower. We cannot see the grass grow; but we can watch the growth of the locust's wings. Amazement seizes upon us before this sublime phantasmagoria of the grain of hemp which in a few hours has been transmuted into the finest cloth.
It is I who need a change of raiment and a chair; aye, by the token of the Locust's Head! He will then lead you to a place where you will find all ready and a suitable chair with trusty bearers. The rest lies beneath your grinding heel. Prosperity!" Weng prostrated himself and withdrew.
I'm not sure that the locust's droning and the bright flutter of the butterfly's wings are not the way Nature has of fastening the soul to the meaning of it all. I wonder if you ever heard the lines foolish they read, but they are not: "'All summer long there was one little butterfly, Flying ahead of me, Wings red and yellow, a pretty little fellow, Flying ahead of me.
Should a rich man throw money into thy lap, take heed, and do not look upon it as a benefit; for I have often heard from the great and good that the patience of the poor is more meritorious than the gift of the rich. Were King Bahram Ghor to distribute a whole roasted elk, it would not be equal to the gift of a locust's leg from an ant."
These locust-birds are about the size of a swallow, with numerous speckles like a starling. They live exclusively on locusts follow them, build their nests, rear their young in the midst of them, and devour them. But this is by no means the locust's only enemy. Every animal, domestic and wild, destroys and eats him.
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