RAVAGES OF LOCUSTS. 



251 



damage the country sustained exceeded computation.* 

 They have frequently come also from Africa into Italy 

 and Spain. In the year 591 an infinite army of 

 locusts, of a size unusually large, ravaged a consider- 

 able part of Italy, and being at last cast into the sea 

 (as seems for the most part to be their fate), a pesti- 

 lence, it is alleged, arose from the stench, which car- 

 ried off nearly a million of men and beasts. In the 

 Venetian territory, likewise, in 1478, more than 30,000 

 persons are said to have perished in a famine chiefly 

 occasioned by the depredations of locusts.f 



* Bingley, Anim. Biog. iii. 280. 

 t MouflCet, Theatr. Insect., 123. 



Locust. 



