LOCUSTID^ — LOCUSTS. 1 03 



traders, in the year 591. These were of a larger size than 

 common, as we are informed by Mouifet, who quotes an 

 ancient historian ; and from their stench, when cast into the 

 sea, arose a pestilence which carried off near a million of 

 men and cattle.^ 



In A.D. 6^7, Syria and Mesopotamia were overrun by 

 Locusts.^ 



"About the year of our Lord 8T2," we read in Wanley's 

 Wonders, "came into France such an innumerable company 

 of Locusts, that the number of them darkened the very 

 light of the sun ; they were of extraordinary bigness, had a 

 sixfold order of wings, six feet, and two teeth, the hardness 

 whereof surpassed that of stone. These eat up every green 

 thing in all the fields of France. At last, by the force of 

 the winds, they were carried into the sea (the Baltic) and 

 there drowned ; after which, by the agitation of the waves, 

 the dead bodies of them were cast upon the shores, and from 

 the stench of them (together with the famine they had made 

 with their former devouring) there arose so great a plague, 

 t]i:it it is verily thought every third person in France died of 

 it."^ These Locusts devoured in France, on an average every 

 day, one hundred and forty acres ; and their daily marches, or 

 distances of flight, were computed at twenty miles.* 



In 12tl, all the cornfields of Milan were destroyed; and 

 in the year 1339, all those of Lombardy.^ We read in 

 Bateman's Doorae, that in 1476, ''grasshoppers and the 

 great rising of the river Isula did spoyle al Poland." A 

 famine took place in the Venetian territory in 1478, occa- 

 sioned by these terrific scourges, in which thirty thousand 

 persons are reported to have perished. Mouflfet mentions 

 many other instances of their devastations in Europe, — in 

 France, Spain, Italy, and Germany.*^ 



A passage of Locusts in France, in 1613, entirely cut up, 

 even to the very roots, more than fifteen thousand acres of 

 corn in the neighborhood of Aries, and had even penetrated 

 into the barns and granaries, when, as it were by Provi- 

 dence, many hundreds of birds, especially starlings, came to 



1 Mouff., Theat. Ins., p. 123. 



2 Shaw, Zool, vi. 137. 



3 Wonders, ii. 507. 



t Shaw, ZooL, vi. 137. 5 rbi^i 



6 Thtatr. Insect., p. 123. 



