24 BEETLE. 



insects had already entered, they were thus driven 

 out again. Towards the latter end of summer 

 they returned of themselves, and so totally disap- 

 peared, that in a few days you could not see one 

 left. A year or two ago, all along the South 

 West Coast of the county of Galway, for some 

 miles together, there were found dead on the shore 

 such infinite multitudes of them, and in such vast 

 heaps, that, by a moderate estimate, it was com- 

 puted there could not be less than forty or fifty 

 horse-loads in all ; which was a new colony, or a 

 supernumerary swarm from the same place whence 

 the fiist stock came, in 1688, driven by the wind 

 from their native land, which I conclude to be 

 Normandy or Britany in France, it being a, 

 country much infested with this insect, and from 

 whence England heretofore has been pestered in 

 a similar manner with swarms of this vermin; 

 but these, meeting with a contrary wind, before 

 they could land, were stopped, and, tired with the 

 voyage, were all driven into the sea, which, by 

 the motion of its waves ar.d tides, cast their float- 

 ing bodies in heaps on the shore. It is observed 

 that they seldom keep above a year together in a 

 place, and their usual stages or marches are com- 

 puted to be about six miles in a year. Hitherto 

 their progress has been westerly, following the 

 course of that wind which blows most commonly 

 in this country." 



It is recorded by Mouffet, in his History of 

 Insects, that in the year 1574, in the month of 

 February, so great a quantity of these insects 



