122 History of Animal Plagues. 



A.D, 1495. Locusts in Spain. In the preceding year there 

 was a severe mortahty amongst wild animals {sylvestr'mm aniina- 

 liiim mortalitas), presaging (it was remarked) the bubonic plague 

 which occurred this year in the human species.^ 



A.D. 1496. In Ireland, ' Great inclemency this year, so that 

 great destruction was brought upon cows and all other beasts. A 

 great dearth [ascolt) throughout nearly the whole of Erinn this 

 year; and a great hindrance to fattening this year. Great in- 

 clemency in the autumn of this year, by which all men, and par- 

 ticularly in Fermanagh, were ruined in respect to their corn/ ^ 



A.D. 1499- In Germany there was a dreadful murrain in 

 cattle, and people were much afflicted by pestilence. Vegetation 

 was nearly destroyed by blights and caterpillars, and mould- 

 spots, or signacula,^ were observed in France and Germany. 

 Schenkius tells us that famine reigned in many parts of Europe, 

 accompanied by disease. The preceding winter had been so 

 severe as to kill nearly the whole of the brute creation, and the 

 summer was so intensely hot, that trees were set on fire by the 

 heat of the sun.* 



1 Chron. Monast. Mellic. Pez. Scrip, rer. Austriac, vol. i. p. 273. 



- Annals of Ulster. 



^ The exact nature of these signacida, or blood spots, does not seem to have been 

 investigated until 1819, when, in Padua, a farmer having experienced great alarm 

 from discovering crimson spots, like blood, on his maize porridge, a commission of 

 scientific men was appointed to investigate the alarming phenomenon. One of 

 the commission, M. Sette, imagined the vivid patches to be composed of micro- 

 scopical fungi, which he designated Zoogaladina imetrofa. The renowned Ehren- 

 berg, however, considers them to be made up not of fungi, but a kind of animal- 

 cule which he named Alonas prodigiosa, from its extreme minuteness. Like the 

 blood corpuscles, these creatures when examined individually appear as transparent 

 and without colour, but when viewed as a mass have the tint of blood. In size 

 they are from the three-thousandth to an eight-thousandth part of a line in length, 

 and a cubic inch is supposed by the great microscopist and naturalist to be capable 

 of containing from 46,656,000,000,000 to 884,836,000,000,000 of these animated 

 specks.' Passat Staub und Blut-regen.'2ta\m., 1849. Hist. Influenza. 



* Schenkius. Hist. Gen. Hanover. 



