646 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO J 734. 



rains about the latter end of May, and for the greatest part of June and July. 

 On these accounts it was, that these noxious animals did not arrive to their 

 usual size and strength; so that they were yet small, about the begiiuiing of 

 June, having not reached that maturity to which they usually arrive about this 

 time of tile year. The locusts in particular, impatient of wet, were in the 

 beginning of July found dead all over the fields; and many of them that had 

 retired into the longer stalks of herbs and flowers, and had stuck close to them 

 by their mouths, hung dead from them. 



As to the shape of these locusts, they were difirerent from the green ones, 

 conmionly observed every year, in the fields and meadows, and wiiich are few 

 in number. The colour of the head and back was black, and in some grey, 

 with yellow specks interspersed; their belly was yellowish ; the muscles of the 

 hinder feet red ; and when they were on wing, they looked of a purple colour. 

 The bodies of most of them were not above 1-i- inch in length; though in 

 August 1731 M. Weidler observed some shrivelled up, to be upwards of 2 

 inches. In the same month the male and female copulate; each dam contains 

 upwards of 30 eggs, which they lay in holes made in the earth ; and at the close 

 of September they die upon them. Four years before, when they first came 

 to these parts from Poland, through Lusatia and the Marche, they flew high in 

 the air in a body, in the middle of summer, above the tops of the houses 

 and turrets; so that at a distance they had the appearance of a cloud. On 

 whatever place they alighted, they quite covered it, and spread far and wide. 

 They seemed to be fond of the more tender tops of the ears of corn ; to gain 

 which the better, they cut down the whole unripe ear, especially in the night 

 time. In one night the ears of whole fields were cut down in such a manner, 

 that in some villages the farmers had not even the seed they sowed. 



^n Extract from the History of the Inoculation of the Small-pox, written by E. 

 Timoni* M. D. Communicated to the Royal Society by Sam. Horneman, 

 M. D. N" 432, p. 296. From the Latin. 



Dr. T. states, that at the beginning of the practice of inoculation of the 

 small-pox, at Constantinople, there was a person who used to make an incision 

 through the skin, and then introduce into the wound the scab of a dried pus- 

 tule, tying a bandage over it. But he observes that this mode of operating was 

 objectionable, not only on account of the pain attending it, but also because it 

 sometimes excited the small-pox in its worst form, while at other times it failed 

 to comnmnicate the disease, though even then it produced very bad sores in 



* See his Account of Inoculation, vol. 6', p. 88, of these Abridgments. 



