264 History of Animal Plagues. 



hood of Irishtown was famous for the quantities of shrimps 

 cauoht there, but the great frost of 1740 destroyed them, and the 

 few that are now (1776) found are neither so large nor dehcate/^ 

 Another authority in Ireland writes : 'March nth. We have 

 dismal accounts from several parts of the kingdom, that besides 

 the great number of sheep which die daily, the wool peels off 

 those that are living, and is scattered up and down the fields in 

 such small quantities, that it will be impossible to gather it. 

 April 15th. There is now as great a scarcity of provisions in 

 the city (Dublin) as ever was known, and it is much to be feared 

 all over the kingdom. Several thousand sheep have died in 

 Connaught within the last two months.^ ^ 



During this and the two following years, great ravages were 

 committed by a most destructive insect in many provinces of 

 Sweden. This creature destroyed all the meadows by devouring 

 every kind of herbage, except the foxtail grass.^ 



Petechial fever and malignant sore-throat were rife among 

 mankind in England. In the month of May, Huxham writes : 

 ' Violent cough, with sore-throat, oppressed horses and other ani- 

 mals in general. It often attacked a herd of neat cattle with 

 such effect that only a few escaped. The sheep suffered very 

 much from cough, and became emaciated and withered. Great 

 numbers died, and their livers were found to be very greatly en- 

 laro-ed and schirrous ; but the gall-bladder was enormously in- 

 creased, and was turgid with black bile.' * The Cattle Plague 

 had extended or broken out anew in Hungary, and passed into 

 Bohemia and Bavaria. 



From this period up to the end of the eighteenth century, it 

 may be truly said that this bovine scourge was never absent 

 from some part of Europe, and that the principal cause of its ex- 

 tension and perpetuation is to be found in the almost continuous 

 wars occurring during the interval. We have seen that, in 

 1735, hostilities introduced it into Italy. The war of the 

 Austrian Succession, on the death of Charles VI., in 1740, 

 aided largely in maintaining and disseminating it ; as the Hun- 



^ Rutly. Op. cit. " Pile's Occurrences. 



3 Amoen. Acad., vol. vi. p. 17. ^ Huxham. Op. cit., p. 232. 



