States Entomological Commission to investigate the subject, and report upon the best (if any) means of counteracting the evil effects of the pest. The result, so far as published, consists of two enormous volumes, teeming with information, and taking up the whole subject of locusts both in America and the Old World. C. spretus has its home or permanent area in the arid plains of the central region east of the Rocky Mountains, extending slightly into the southern portion of British North America; outside this is a wide fringe to which the term sub-permanent is applied, and this is again bounded by the limits of only occasional distribution, the whole occupying a large portion of the North American continent; but it is not known to have crossed the Rocky Mountains westward, or to have extended into the eastern States.
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As to remedial or preventive measures tending to check the ravages of locusts, little unfortunately can be said, but anything that will apply to one species may be used with practically all. One point is certain; direct remedies must always be of small avail. Something can be done (as is now done in Cyprus) by offering a price for all the egg-tubes collected, which is certainly the most direct manner of attacking them. Some little can be done by destroying the young larvæ while yet in an unwinged condition, and by digging trenches in the line of march into which they can fall and be drowned or otherwise put an end to. Infinitesimally little can be done with the winged hordes having the migratory instinct upon them; starvation, the outcome of their own work, probably here does much. It has been shown that with all migratory locusts the breeding places, or true homes, are comparatively barren districts (mostly elevated plateaus); hence the progress of civilization and colonization, with its concomitant necessity for converting those heretofore barren plains into areas of fertility, may (and probably will) gradually lessen the evil.
Locusts, like all other animals, have their natural enemies. Many birds greedily devour them, and it has many times been remarked that migratory swarms of the insects were closely followed by myriads of birds. Predatory insects of other orders also attack them, especially when they are in the unwinged condition. More over, like all other insects, they have still more deadly insect foes as parasites. Some attack the fully developed winged insect. But the greater part adopt the more insidious method of attacking the eggs. To such belong certain beetles, chiefly of the family Cantharidæ, and especially certain two-winged flies of the family Bombyliidæ. These latter, both in the Old and New World, must prevent vast quantities of eggs from producing larvæ. Popular ignorance on this subject is yet great, and within a few months before this article was written it was exemplified in a remarkable manner by a suggestion from the Government officials of Cyprus that a certain parasite known to be destructive to the eggs in Asia Minor might be introduced into the island, a suggestion immediately followed by the discovery that what is probably the same parasite already existed there.
A flight of locusts would appear not to be always an unmixed evil, even to man. The larger Old World species form articles of food with certain semi-civilized and savage races, by whom they are considered as delicacies, or as part of ordinary diet, according to the race and the method of preparation.
Literature. – Kirby and Spence, Introduction to Entomology, 7th ed., London 1856; Köppen, "Die geographische Verbreitung der Wanderheuschrecke," in Geograph. Mittheilungen, vol. xvii., 1871; Gerstäcker, Die Wanderheuschrecke, Berlin, 1876; Reports of the United States Entomological Commission on the Rocky Mountain Locust, by Riley, Packard, Thomas, and others, 2 vols., Washington, 1878-80. (R. M'L.)
LOCUST-TREE, Ceratonia Siliqua, L., the carob-tree, of the tribe Cassiaæ of the order Leguminosæ, is the sole species, widely diffused spontaneously and by cultivation from Spain to the eastern Mediterranean regions, and from Egypt to Bornou in Central Africa (Hogg, Hooker's Journ. of Bot., i. 113), and imported to Hindustan (Graham, p. 254). It differs from all leguminous plants by the dilated disk to the calyx. It has no petals, and the flowers are polygamous or diœcious. The legume is compressed, often curved, indehiscent, and coriaceous, but with sweet pulpy divisions between the seeds, which, as in other genera of the Cassieæ, are albuminous. The pods are eaten by men and animals, and in Sicily a spirit and a syrup are made from them. These husks being often used for swine are called swine's bread, and are probably referred to in the parable of the Prodigal Son. It is also called St John's bread, from a misunderstanding of Matt. iii. 4. The carob-tree was regarded by Sprengel as the tree with which Moses sweetened the bitter waters of Marah (Exod. xv. 25), as the kharrúb, according to Avicenna (p. 205), has the property of sweetening salt and bitter waters. Gerard (Herball, p. 1241) cultivated it in 1597, it having been introduced in 1570 (Loudon's Arb., ii. 660). For various names, extent of distribution, historical references, &c., see Pickering's Chron. Hist. of Pl., p. 141.
LODÈVE, capital of an arrondissement of the department of Hérault, France, lies at an elevation of 674 feet, under a range of hills rising to 2790 feet, in a small valley where the Soulondre joins the Lergue, a tributary of the Hérault, 34 miles east-north-east from Montpellier. A bridge over the Lergue connects the town with the faubourg of Carmes on the left bank of the river, and two bridges over the Soulondré lead to the extensive ruins of the Château de Montbrun. There is railway communication with Agde by a line following the Hérault valley. The old cathedral of St Fulcran, founded by him in 950, was rebuilt in the 14th century and restored in the 16th; the cloister, dating from the 15th century, is ornate in style. In the picturesque environs of the town stands the well-preserved monastery of St Michel de Grammont, dating from the 12th century; it is now used as farm buildings. In the neighbourhood are three fine dolmens. Lodève is one of the most important industrial centres of the south of France, upwards of 7000 workmen being employed in the manufacture of woollens for army clothing; the aggregate horse-power of the factories is 1500. Wool is imported in large quantities from the neighbouring provinces, and from Morocco; the exports are cloth to Italy and the Levant, wine, brandy, chemicals, and wood. The population in 1876 was 10,528.
Luteva existed prior to the invasion of the Romans, who for some time called it Forum Neronis. The inhabitants were converted to Christianity by St Flour, first bishop of the city, about 323. After passing successively into the hands of the Visigoths, the Franks, the Ostrogoths, the Arabs, and the Carlovingians, it became in the 9th century a separate countship, and afterwards the domain of the bishops of Lodève. During the religious wars it suffered much, especially in 1573, when it was sacked. It ceased to be an episcopal see in 1789.
LODGE, Thomas (c. 1556-1625), dramatist, novelist, pamphleteer, poet, – but not player, – was born about the year 1556 at West Ham, and was possibly the son of a namesake, shortly afterwards lord mayor of London. He was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and then entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn, where, as in the other Inns of Court, a love of letters, and a crop of debts and difficulties, alike grew as matters of course. Thus already as a young man he preferred the looser ways of life and the
lighter aspects of literature. When the penitent Stephen Gosson had (in 1579) published his Schoole of Abuse, Lodge took up the glove in his Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage-
