i8o History of Animal Plagues. 



and in the spring wide-spread inundations, causing a great 

 famine and destruction among men, cattle, birds, and other 

 animals. Influenza in man in Dublin. In France and in Italy 

 the olive trees were destroyed. Sologne and other countries were 

 visited by scorbutic disease and gangrenous ergotism, a fourth 

 part of the rye crop having been infected with the ergot or spur. 

 A most unfavourable summer in England, the crops suffering 

 very much, and the wheat generally on the N.E. side of the fur- 

 rows being destroyed. In Dantzic, an epidemy of a very serious 

 character. Previous to its appearance, ' crows, daws, sparrows, 

 and other birds, which at other times are to be seen in the town 

 and about the gardens in vast numbers, were all fled, and none 

 of them were to be seen until November; the same was likewise 

 observed of the storks and swallows.^ None were to be seen for 

 four months.^ In France and in Suabia, heavy mortality amongst 

 animals, and a pustular epizooty destroyed nearly all the fish in 

 the lake of Zurich." In Russia and in Asia, locusts committed 

 great depredations. Kanold asserts that the dreaded epizooty of 

 contagious typhus (Cattle Plague, Rinderpest, Pestilentz des 

 Viehs) had commenced its rava2;es in Russia. He savs of the 

 weather, in writing from Dantzic to J. Kanold at Breslau : ^ We 

 have now so strong a frost that the like has not been seen for 

 twenty or thirty years. It has already lasted fourteen days. As a 

 consequence, the pestilence in Thorn, as also in Graudenz, has 

 subsided ; yet the misery is great, for the cold presses hard upon 

 the poor, and many men are frozen to death in the open 

 streets. Cattle and birds die from the frost, and many rivers 

 are entirely frozen. Thence arises much distress, especially as 

 grain is very dear. As in Poland, the pest arose solely and 

 alone from the great need of the people, who were obliged to 

 live upon roots, bark, &c. I much fear this evil will extend 

 itself.^ ^ And elsewhere he states : ' The contagion of the plague 

 (in man) is the most cruel of all, and from the year 1709, 

 which year had already struck terror into every one from 

 the fearful cold accompanying its commencement, the two fear- 



^ riiilosophical Transactions, No. 337, p. loi. 

 ^ Hartmami. Helvetische Ichthyologie, 1827. 

 ^ Sendschriben von der Peste in Dantzig, p. 4. 



