24 HISTORY OF 



not so dreadful as in the more southern parts of 

 Europe. There, though the plain and the forest 

 be stripped of their verdure, the power of vegeta- 

 tion is so great, that an interval of three or four 

 days repairs the calamity ; but our verdure is the 

 livery of a season, and we must wait till the en- 

 suing spring repairs the damage. Besides, in their 

 long flights to this part of the world, they are 

 famished by the tediousness of their journey, and 

 are therefore more voracious wherever they hap- 

 pen to settle. But it is not by what they devour 

 that they do so much damage, as by what they 

 destroy. Their very bite is thought to con- 

 taminate the plant, and to prevent its vegeta- 

 tion. To use the expression of the husbandman, 

 they burn whatever they touch, and leave the 

 marks of their devastation for two or three years 

 ensuing. But if they be noxious while living, 

 they are still more so when dead ; for wherever 

 they fall, they infect the air in such a manner, 

 that the smell is insupportable. Orosius tells us, 

 that in the year of the world 380p, there was 

 an incredible number of locusts which infected 

 Africa ; and, after having eaten up every thing 

 that was green, they flew off, and were drowned 

 in the African Sea, where they caused such a 

 stench, that the putrefying bodies of hundreds of 

 thousands of men could not equal it. 



In the year 1690 a cloud of locusts was seen 

 to enter Russia in three different places, and 

 from thence to spread themselves over Poland 

 and Lithuania, in such astonishing multitudes, 

 that the air was darkened, and the earth covered 



