so many are washed ashore, that it is said by one observer that their
dead bodies formed a bank of nearly 40 miles long and 300 yards wide,
and many feet in depth, and the stench from the corruption of their
bodies proceeded 150 miles inland.

When a swarm of locusts temporarily settles in a district, all
vegetation rapidly disappears, and then hunger urges them on another
stage. Such is their voracity that cannibalism amongst them has been
asserted as an outcome of the failure of other kinds of food.

Locusts have their natural enemies. Many birds greedily devour them, in
fact a migratory swarm is usually followed by myriads of birds,
especially sea gulls; they are often found 150 to 200 miles inland.
Often a flock of gulls will clean up a "manga" of locusts; they devour
them by thousands, and will then go to a neighbouring laguna, take a
little water, and throw up all they have eaten, and at a given signal go
off again to fill up with more locusts, only to repeat the operation
time after time. Predatory insects of other orders also attack them,
especially when in the unwinged state. They have still more deadly foes
in parasites, some of which attack the fully developed locust, but the
greater number adopt the more insidious method of attacking the eggs.

Many inventions have been brought out with the object of exterminating
the locusts, some of which, at least, have doubtless been partly
successful, but determined and combined effort by the nation and land
proprietors is imperative if the remedial and preventive measures
proposed are to reap the success hoped for.

The Agricultural Defence Department reports having spent $10,561,540 mn.
from 1st January, 1909, to 31st May, 1910, in fighting the locusts. The
total area invaded was 135,000,000 hectares (about 337,500,000 acres).

From 1892 to date, and with what is required for the present year,
$54,000,000 have been spent in combating locusts and like plagues to
agriculture.

CONSCRIPT LIFE IN THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC.

The life of a conscript is more agreeable than most people in the
Argentine Republic imagine it to be, although it has its disadvantages
as well as its advantages.

Every year all over the Republic a drawing takes place, calling to arms,
for a year in the Army or two in the Navy, Argentines who have attained
the age of twenty-one. At an average 12,000 to 15,000 are called out
every year and distributed in the different regiments, accordin