The locust plague and its suppression / by Æneas Munro.

  • Munro, Aeneas.
Date:
[1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The locust plague and its suppression / by Æneas Munro. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    who speak and act on the principle that it is wrong to do anything to check the work of these devouring insects, because they are sent for a divine and specific purpose. Such people, as a rule, are not open or subject to reason. They are a law unto themselves. What alone- or at least chiefly will touch these people, a comparatively insignificant and fortunately an exceptionally small number, is self-interest. The sluggard always cheerfully accepts the fruit or reward of the man of action. Those who are loud in affirming that the plague is a visitation from God, and that nothing should be done directly to thwart it, yet try all means to locate the pest on their neighbours; and, if they can, they drive and frighten the locusts away from themselves, so that they may go elsewhere. They thus do not show a very noble or becoming spirit. Selfishness is thus brought into sharp contrast with its antithesis. 64. Reasoning in a circle.—The following curious and mixed letter in The Natal Diocesan Magazine of April 1896 is typical of the manner of thinking of a few persons :— A Word on Behalf of the Locusts Dear Sir,—Of late the locusts have had a bad time of it. They have been cursed and attacked on all sides. And I do not wish to say a word against their extermination; but nevertheless I am going to put myself in the locusts’ place and try and say a word on their behalf. We are, I think, very much inclined to put all troubles and calamities into one bag, as if they were all of a sort. But the coming of the locusts is not like to a railway accident, which can always be —or could be, if we were omniscient—traced to some mistake in a man, and which teaches us that with all our cleverness we cannot guarantee the .safe working of any human invention. Nor is it like to a plague, which often comes through inadequate sanitary arrange- ments, and which thus is a message from God, telling us that cleanli- ness is next to godliness. Nor is it like to a dearth of water owing to want of storage, as is the case now in golden Johannesburg, where there might easily be a water supply more than sufficient if the inhabitants expended their money more usefully, and less on prize fights and such elevating and necessary comforts. 65. But locusts come to us direct from God, as the creatures of God, and as we believe that God has made everything very good, and everything for some useful purpose, so we must find for them a place in the economy of nature. What is their use ? Why does God send them ? I am not much of a naturalist, but does not the answer come somewhat after this manner? We Europeans come to a land like South Africa, and find it fair and much to be I desired: rich pastures and meadows, with herbage not too rank or too coarse, all ready, generally speaking, for our flocks and our herds. The land in the past has only been very partially occupied and farmed and worked by the people of the soil, and yet is in a fit and desirable condition. And
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