INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. IgJ 



locusts with which the Egyptian tyrant and his people were visited for 

 their oppression of the Israelites. Only conceive to yourself a country 

 so covered by them that no one can see the face of the ground — a whole 

 land darkened, and all its produce, whether herb or tree, so devoured that 

 not the least vestige of green is left in either,^ But it is not necessary 

 for me to enlarge further upon a history, the circumstances of which are 

 so well known to you. 



To this species of devastation Africa in general seems always to have 

 been peculiarly subject. This may be gathered from the law in Cyrenaica, 

 mentioned by Pliny, by which the inhabitants were enjoined to destroy 

 the locusts in three different states, three times in the year — first their eggs, 

 then their young, and lastly the perfect insect.^ And not without reason 

 was such a law enacted ; for Orosius tells us that in the year of the world 

 3800, Africa was infested by such infinite myriads of these animals, that 

 having devoured every green thing, after flying off to sea they were 

 drowned, and being cast upon the shore they emitted a stench greater than 

 could have been produced by the carcasses of 100,000 men.^ St. Augus- 

 tine also mentions a plague to have arisen in that country from the same 

 cause, which destroyed no less than 800,000 persons {octingenta hominum 

 millia) in the kingdom of Masanissa alone, and many more in the territories 

 bordering upon the sea."* 



From Africa this plague was occasionally imported into Italy and 

 Spain ; and a historian, quoted in Mouffet, relates that in the year 591 an 

 infinite army of locusts of a size unusually large, grievously ravaged part 

 of Italy ; and being at last cast into the sea, from their stench arose a 

 pestilence which carried off near a million of men and beasts. In the 

 Venetian territory, also, in 1478, more than 30,000 persons are said to 

 have perished in a famine occasioned by these terrific scourges. Many 

 other instances of their devastations in Europe, in France, Spain, Italy, 

 Germany^, &-c., are recorded by the same author. In 1650, a cloud of 

 them was seen to enter Russia in three different places, which from thence 

 passed over into Poland and Lithuania, where the air was darkened by 

 their numbers. In some places they were seen lying dead heaped one 

 upon another to the depth of four feet ; in others they covered the surface 

 like a black cloth, the trees bent with their weight, and the damage they 

 did exceeded all computation.^ At a later period, in Languedoc, when the 

 sun became hot they took wing and fell upon the corn, devouring both 

 leaf and ear, and that with such expedition that in three hours thej^ would 

 consume a whole field. After having eaten up the corn, they attacked 

 the vines, the pulse, the willows, and lastly the hemp, motwithstanding its 

 bitterness.^ Sir H. Davy informs us^ that the French government in 1813 

 issued a decree with a view to occasion the destruction of grasshoppers. 



Even this happy island, so remarkably distinguished by its exemption 

 from most of those scourges to which other nations are exposed, was once 

 alarmed by the appearance of locusts. In 1748 they were observed here 



> Exod. X. 5. 14, 15. 



' Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 29. A similar law was enacted in Lemnos, by which every one was 

 compelled to bring a certain measure of locusts annually to the magistrates. Plin. ibid. 

 * Oros. contra Pag. 1. v. c. 2. * Lesser. L. 247. note 46. 



» Mouffet, 123. 6 Bingley, iii. 258. 



' Philos. Trans. 1686. » Elements of Agricultural Chemistry^ 233. 



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