History of AniDuil Plagues. 23 



cattle^ so that a general famine prevailed over Ireland/^ during 

 the five years that Cairbre was in the sovereignty. 



A.D. 67. A comet was seen this year, after which followed a 

 destructive tempest in Campania. Earthquakes took place at 

 Hicropolis and Laodicea. Six hundred sheep were killed in Italy 

 by gases emitted during an earthquake.^ 



'The desire shown by ancient writers to preserve the records 

 of eclipses which preceded or followed any important event is of 

 the greatest value, as we can thus easily fix the date of such 

 events; for the chronology of eclipses is founded on immutable 

 causes, and any fact stated to have occurred synchronously with 

 phenomena of the kind, can at once, by that very circumstance, 

 find its determined place in chronology .^^ By eclipses we can 1 

 also test the veracity of a historian, and frequently discover the ' 

 system of his chronology. An idea prevailed very extensively, 

 and to a certain degree obtains credence still among writers upon 

 philosophy as well as medicine^ that eclipses and cometary in- 

 fluences affect the organized world, and are one of the causes of 

 blights and pestilences ; and it was probably from being imbued j 

 with such impressions, that the early annalists noted eclipses of ' 

 the sun and moon so carefully. But the object of introducing 

 their occurrence into a modeni history of these pestilences is 

 more with a view to fix a clue to the date and authenticity of 

 these, than to favour such theories.'* 



A.D. 69. During the reign of the Emperor Nero it rained so 

 much of the so-called blood in Albania, that rivers ran blood. 

 An epizooty broke out among the domestic animals, and an 

 epidemy in man.^ The accounts "of some Roman authors would 

 lead to the inference that the symptoms of the malady corre- 

 sponded with those of the epizootic pleuro-pneumonia of our own 

 times. 



Columella, who lived at this period, and whose influence on 

 the progress of Veterinary Science in that early age was very 



' O'Clcary. Book of Conquests. 



^ Seneca. Also Orosius, vii. ; and Magd. Eccles. Hist. ii. 53. 



^ L'Art de Verifier les Dates, &c. Paris, 1783, vol. i. 



* The Census of Ireland. 



* Tacitus. Annals, xvi, Suetonius. Vita Nero, 39. 



