It has been noticed that the locusts appear invariably about the middle of May, and die or depart in August. They are most mischievous during the month of June; they have an objection to damp or marshy grounds. The females bury themselves in the earth when dying, probably to conceal their eggs. The males die above ground, where the ants and smaller insects speedily devour them. Neither rain nor cold, however severe, appears to destroy or injure the eggs, which lie in the ground like seed during the winter, and burst forth into life in the first warmth of summer. Each female is understood to have about fifty young, which in some measure accounts for their astounding increase. They require about twenty days to attain their full growth, sometimes longer, if the weather is unfavourable.

CHAPTER IX.

Constantinople. Pera. Eastern contrasts. The theatre. A Turkish gentleman. Pleasant practical joke of a young British officer in a foreign country.__Admiration of the same by Levantines. Speculating ladies. English sailors and French soldiers fraternising. Their cordiality. Their musical entertainment interrupted by an Italian waiter. Prompt confusion of the latter. The merchant diplomatist and the diplomatist of Navarino and Sinope. Wellearned popularity of the Duke of Cambridge. Officers in the service of the King of Candy. The Pera belles. A short pipe. Our golden and buttony friends of the commissariat again. An autumnal prima donna. "Aristocratic birds." Improper elderly French banker. The Adonis of Galata. His pugnacious propensities. Paucity of policemen. Humanity mongers. An important butler. A ruination shop. The streets of Pera by night. Palace of silence.

THERE is a clumping of clogs about the uneven streets, and two or three sedan chairs of very great ladies move dripping along. Invalided officers, full of bad wine and good spirits, roll along, arm in arm, laughing and discoursing wildly, being firmly persuaded, of course, that not one of those young Perotes, who are watching them so eagerly as models of manners, can understand a word they utter.

Well, confidence is a good thing, and so is freedom of speech, especially when it is not all on one side.

Sometimes a deep growl of impatience may be heard from some strapped-down and buckled-up elderly beau, whose eyes are not so good as they were twenty years ago, and who has either stuck in the deep bog of mud which fills the middle of the street, or fairly tumbled over, umbrella and all, in an unsuspected hole. Young ladies who have come out on matrimonial speculations from Clapham or Hackney, are anxious about their back hair and garnet brooches amidst all this provoking rain and unmannered hustling. They have, however, an opportunity of displaying some remarkably neat twinkling ankles, which contrast agreeably with the splay feet and awkward waddle of the Greeks, so that they may be consoled. MM. Demetraki and Stavro Somethingopolis, two half-civilised natives, who have been half-educated somewhere in Europe, especially with respect to billiards and écarté, are raving out atrocious French in frantic accents to attract attention, and laughing at nothing whenever their tongues tire, till the street rings again with discordant echoes. They are dressed within an inch of their lives in the last style of some Smyrna or Athenian Moses and Sons. They are the very embodiment of insolent bad taste. But way for a pasha, probably one of the ministers who has been on an embassy to Europe, and preserved his taste for evening entertainments. He comes plashing through the mire at a stately tramp, and mounted on a haughty Arabian horse, which tosses its small, beautiful head disdainfully from side to side. He carries an ample umbrella, and his toilette is so elaborately clean and sparkling, that he quite glitters under it. He is evidently a man of high rank. Cavasses, all blazing with gold, precede him, and pipe-bearers hem him round, while some officer of his overgrown household throws the strong light of a manycandled lantern to illuminate his way. He is, in short, the very pink of Oriental swellism—a Turkish gentleman of the most polished kind. He little knows, as he puffs out his chest, and goes parading along, what is about to happen to him when he passes that group of wild young officers, fresh from dinner. See one of them, a rollicking young giant,

some seven feet high, looks for a moment at the pasha's immense lantern-then there is a dare-devil twinkling in his eye, which assuredly bodes mischief, and the next moment the pasha's lantern is pierced through, twirling round aloft on the top of a walking-stick. Hooray! shouts our lengthy acquaintance; there is a storm of astonished laughter from a crowd of admiring witnesses-especially, of course, from MM. Demetraki and Stavro Somethingopolis, who are quite wild with delight at the freak; yet I should like to see that young officer obliged to sell out, and go home, as a dangerous international mischief-maker; for see, the stately Turk has turned rein, and is riding home with a beard positively bristling with anger.

In a word, it is about seven o'clock in the evening, of a pouring day, and the polite or unpolite world of Pera are going, as best they can, to the opera. I cannot say that the opera of Pera absolutely claims a visit from the enlightened traveller. There is an unhealthy smell of dead rats about it-a prevailing dampness and dinginess-a curious fog, a loudness, a dirtiness-which induces me, generally, to prefer an arm-chair and a dictionary, a cup of tea and a fire; but I am going to-night, because my books are all packed up, and my servant has gone out for a holiday to carry small scandals to his acquaintances. I have also been eating a most detestable farewell dinner at a roguish pastry-cook's ; and my companions have borne me off, whether or not.

The howling and steaming of the unwashed crowd at the theatre doors is altogether so powerful, that we adjourn to the theatre coffee-house, and discuss a glass of punch and a cigar till it has subsided. Some British sailors and French soldiers are fraternizing. They are singing Wapping songs and French chansonettes, at the same time. They are happy, but noisy-very noisy; and not only drunk, but how drunk! A waiter mildly suggests to one of them, in Italian, that the temple of harmony is next door, and that they are disturbing the potations of the rest of the company. He pertinaciously persists in repeating this. Never did a waiter so nearly get knocked down for an imprudence, or was so unconscious of his danger. He smiled while a discussion was going on, under his nose, as to the propriety of