154 History of Animal Plagues. 



A.D. 1683-4. The winters of these years were the coldest ever 

 known ; the summers were rainy, and the autumns cold. Gloss- 

 anthrax was yet prevalent in Germany. 'The sannner of the first 

 year was again very wet. On the 25th of November great cold 

 set \vl, which lasted until the 6th of February the next year. 

 The ensuing summer was very hot and dry; then came an early 

 harvest. In both these years there raged an epizooty among 

 cattlcj called the burning cancer [hrennende krehs). Small silver 

 saws were used to scrape off the blisters or ulcers from the 

 tono-ues.^ ^ 



A.D. 1685. ' In November, a plague amongst cattle began 

 at Groeblowitzius, Tschechnitius, where all perished of an un- 

 known infection. Some we sent to Kuntzendorsum, but there 

 also they all died. No medicines, no remedies availed aught, 

 although we tried many.' ^ Heusinger suspects this was a variolous 

 affection. In the spring an immense flight of grasshoppers de- 

 stroyed all the corn, the vines, willows, pulse, and hemp in 

 Languedoc. 



A.D. 1686. Friesland inundated, and many thousands of men 

 and cattle drowned. A terrific hail-storm did an immense 

 amount of damage. After the capture of Luxembourg by the 

 French, the army suffered from scurvy. ' After this expedition, 

 when the army was approaching the town of Treves, on the 

 Moselle, it came to the Monastery of St Matthew the apostle, for 

 whose feast a countryman had kept a team of three fine horses. 

 Having no place where he could put them, they were left with- 

 out fodder for three days in the part where the inhabitants of 

 the Monastery were accustomed to urinate. The horses, op- 

 pressed with hunger, devoured the long grass which was impreg- 

 nated with urine, and when their master saw this, he prognosti- 

 cated they would suffer; and the result proved him to be correct, 

 for the fattest of them was seized around its feet and legs, and 

 at length over its whole body, with scabs and foetid ulcers, and 

 being led out by its master in the middle of the night into the 

 pasture-land where numbers of horses of the Gallic army were 

 feeding, it infected many, and spread this pest as if it had been 



^ Steubing. Topographic der Stadt Herborn, p. 21. 

 ^ Fibiger. Acta Mag. Wratislaw. Stenzel. Scrip, rer. Silesia. 



