150 History of Animal Plagices. 



the borders of Czierko^ and leaving the Germans alone, had sought 

 only the Poles. At the end of September, however, a violent 

 wind drove these insects to us, but on account of the extreme 

 cold, we did not suffer an equal amount of loss, for except 

 one ox and two horses which they killed, only one person was 

 stung, who, however, recovered.' ^ This was written on the 

 confines of Silesia and Poland. 



A.D. 1680. A cold winter and heavy storms in the spring- 

 time and summer. Invasion of locusts. ' Some annals attest, 

 and the following history certifies, that an epidemic disease in 

 fish is a most sure prognostication of a future plague. Before 

 the last attack of the plague, in the year 1680, fish in the fresh 

 water lake of Mansfeldi, and, in a less degree, in the salt lake of 

 Langenbogia, perished in great numbers from some epidemic 

 disease. They had spots of various colours — black, red, yellow, 

 and green — dotted here and there over their bodies. They 

 exhaled a foul odour and had a nauseous taste; and from 

 eating them, people of the poorer class suffered great pains in the 

 chest, intense prostration of body, nausea, vomiting, and foul 

 and malignant fevers. The medical men at Halle, Islebie, and 

 some other places, after carefully examining this wonderful 

 phenomenon, all attributed it to one cause, — namely, the foul 

 nebulae which pervaded the water at that time; for these nebulae 

 were so corrosive, that the faces of men fishing in the lakes 

 became ulcerated. The surface of the water was covered with a 

 greenish scum.' ^ 



A.D. 1682. Damp summer and inundations. An eruption of 

 Vesuvius ; the city of Catania destroyed by an earthquake ; an 

 eruption of Mount Etna, destroying 60,000 people. A comet 

 was seen, and fogs or mists of a blue colour and sulphureous 

 odour, which destroyed the forage, and extended from Italy to 

 England, were spoken of. In this year there was a great epizooty 

 of glossanthrax, or carbuncle of the tongue, which seemed to 

 spread from west to east, through Switzerland, France, Ger- 

 many, and Poland. A witness to its ravages in Holland, to 

 which country it had at last found its way, in the month of 



^ Stegmann. Ephem. Nat. Curios., vol. ii. p. 427. 

 ^ Ibid. Dec, vol. ii. p. 386. 



