126 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



with which the Egyptian tyrant and his people were visited for their op- 

 pression of the Israelites. Only conceive to yourself a country so covered 

 by them, that no one can see the face of the ground a whole land dark- 

 ened, and all its produce, whether herb or tree, so devoured that not the 

 least vestige of green is left in either. 1 But it is not necessary for me to 

 enlarge further upon a history, the circumstances of which are so well 

 known to you. 



To this species of devastation Africa in general seems always to have 

 been peculiarly subject. This may be gathered from the law in Cyrenaica, 

 mentioned by Pliny, by which the inhabitants were enjoined to destroy the 

 locusts in three different states, three times in the year first their eggs, 

 then their young, and lastly the perfect insect. 2 And not without reason 

 was such a law enacted ; for Orosius tells us that in the year of the world 

 3800, Africa was infested by such infinite myriads of these animals, that 

 having devoured every green thing, after flying off to sea they were 

 drowned, and being cast upon the shore they emitted a stench greater than 

 could have been produced by the carcasses of 100,000 men. 3 St. Augus- 

 tine also mentions a plague to have arisen in that country from the same 

 cause, which destroyed no less than 800,000 persons (octingcnta hominum 

 millia) in the kingdom of Masanissa alone, and many more in the terri- 

 tories bordering upon the sea. 4 



From Africa this plague was occasionally imported into Italy and Spain ; 

 and a historian, quoted in Mouffet, relates that in the year 591 an infinite 

 army of locusts, of a size unusually large, grievously ravaged part of Italy ; 

 and being at last cast into the sea, from their stench arose a pestilence 

 which carried off near a million of men and beasts. In the Venetian ter- 

 ritory, also, in 1478, more than 30,000 persons are said to have perished 

 in a famine occasioned by these terrific scourges. Many other instances of 

 their devastations in Europe, in France, Spain, Italy, Germany 5 , &c., are 

 recorded by the same author. In 1650, a cloud of them was seen to enter 

 Russia in three different places, which from thence passed over into Poland 

 and Lithuania, where the air was darkened by their numbers. In some 

 places they were seen lying dead, heaped one upon another to the depth of 

 four feet ; in others they covered the surface like a black cloth, the trees 

 bent with their weight, and the damage they did exceeded all computation. 6 

 At a later period, in Languedoc, when the sun become 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 a whole field. After 

 having eaten up the corn, they attacked the vines, the pulse, the willows, 

 and lastly the hemp, notwithstanding its bitterness. 7 Sir H. Davy informs 

 us 8 that the French government in 1813 issued a decree with a view to 

 occasion the destruction of grasshoppers. 



Even this happy island, so remarkably distinguished by its exemption 

 from most of those scourges to which other nations are exposed, was once 



1 Exod. x. 5. 14, 15. 



2 Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 29. A similar law was enacted in Lemnos, by which every 

 one was compelled to bring a certain measure of locusts annually to the magistrates. 

 Plin. ibid. 



3 Oros. contra Pag. 1. v. c, 2. * Lesser, L. 247. note 46. 

 * Mouffet, 123. 6 JBingley, iii. 258. 



7 Philos. Trans. 1686. 



8 Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, 233. 



