STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS. 145 



of a size unusually large, ravaged Italy, and being at 

 last cast into the sea, from their stench arose a pesti- 

 lence which carried off about a million of men and 

 beasts. In the Venetian territory also, in 1478, 

 more than thirty thousand persons are said to have 

 perished in a famine occasioned by these terrific 

 scourges. In 1650, a cloud of them was seen to en- 

 ter Russia in three different places, from whence they 

 passed over into Poland and Lithuania, and wherever 

 they moved, the air was darkened by their numbers. 

 In some places they were observed lying dead, heaped 

 one upon another to the depth of four feet, in others 

 they covered the surface of the earth like a black 

 cloth, the trees bent from their weight, and the dam- 

 age done by them exceeded all computation. When 

 the weather became hot they took wing and fell upon 

 the corn, devouring both leaf and ear, and that with such 

 expedition that in three hours they would consume the 

 whole field. After having eaten up the corn, they at- 

 tacked the vines, the pulse, the willows, and at last the 

 hemp, notwithstanding its bitterness. In 1748, they 

 were again observed in Europe, in Wallachia, Molda- 

 via, Transylvania, Hungary, Poland and Germany, and 

 according to the observations made at that time in 

 Vienna, the breadth of one of those swarms was forty 

 miles, and their length so great as to occupy four 

 hours in passing over the city. So great also was the 



density of this cloud of Grasshoppers, that it totally 

 10 



