xlii On Comparative Anatiomy, and the 



disease also first invaded dogs, then slieep and oxen, and 

 lastly mankind. The pestilence epidemic among the cattle, 

 in the year 576, at Rome, Avas succeeded the next year by 

 a mortal plague.^^ 



Dr. Sims of London, informs us, that the scarlet fever 

 which prevailed with very great mortality in the city of Lon- 

 don, in the year 1798, was preceded by a remarkable epide- 

 mic among cats, which is said to have killed myriads of them. 

 In the following year an epidemic prevailed among the hor- 

 ses, which appeared to be a peripneumony, attended with a 

 discharge from the nostrils like glanders. A similar mor- 

 tality among cats prevailed in the months of May and June, 

 in 1797, in Philadelphia, and destroyed thousands of them : 

 and we all remember the pestilential fever that prevailed 

 during the following autumn. Fish too, often experience 

 the effects of a pestilential atmosphere, of which the history 

 of the epidemics in 1793, 179i, and 1797, in our own country, 

 afforded strong proofs.^^ 



In other cases, epidemic diseases, or a general unhealthi- 

 ness of the air, have been preceded or accompanied by a vast 

 increase of insects and small animals. Of this, a number of 

 instances might be mentioned, from Lord Bacon respecting 

 the plague in London in 1666 ; from Diemerbroek on the 

 same disease in Holland in 1635 and 1636 ; from Baddam, 

 on the plague of Dantzick in 1709^ and from the account of 

 the epidemic at Bengal in 1771. 



During the fever at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1633, 

 the woods were filled with innumerable large flies, of the 

 size of bees.eo o,ul daring the pestilential time in the United 

 States, between 1792 and 1801, various other insects abound- 

 ed in difterent parts.^^ In particular, during the year 1798, 

 grasshoppers overspread the country; and we know that 

 that year was very unhealthy. In the year 1805 also, the 

 grass was destroyed by thein in the low counties of New 

 Jersey; and the same year, such was the mortality in Salem 

 county, that I was informed the courts could not proceed in 



