ORDER III. STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS. 101 



but was really identical with the Grasshopper of which we 

 are here speaking. 



According to Pliny, the inhabitants of Cirenaica, in Af- 

 rica, were particularly subject to the ravages of these rapa- 

 cious insects, and on that account were enjoined by law to 

 destroy Grasshoppers, in their three different conditions, 

 three times during the year : first their eggs, wherever they 

 could be found, then their young, and lastly the perfect in- 

 sect. He states also that a similar law was enacted in 

 Lemnos, by which every person was compelled to bring a 

 certain measure of Grasshoppers to the magistrates an- 

 nually. 



" In the year 591 an infinite army of Grasshoppers of 

 a size unusually large ravaged Italy, and being at last cast 

 into the sea, from their stench arose a pestilence which car- 

 ried off about a million of men and beasts. In the Vene- 

 tian territory also, in 1478, more than thirty thousand per- 

 sons are said to have perished in a famine occasioned by 

 these terrific scourges. In 1650 a cloud of them was seen 

 to enter 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 an- 

 other 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 damage done by th'em exceeded all 

 computation. When the w^eather 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 attacked 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, 



