68 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



It will be remembered that the plague of locusts 

 recorded in the Book of Exodus was almost im- 

 mediately followed by the death of the first-born, and 

 in the Middle Ages a locust invasion of the North or 

 West was regarded as one of the regular precursors 

 of great pestilences. 



In 1528 there appeared in the Mark of Branden- 

 burg, during the prevalence of a south-east wind 

 and a great drought, swarms of locusts, "as if 

 this prognostic too of great epidemics was not to 

 be wanting," says Hecker. This "prognostic" had 

 been observed before the Black Death in the four- 

 teenth century, the beginning of the " morbific 

 conditions" in the Far East having been innumerable 

 locust swarms, which destroyed the crops in Hunan, 

 and caused the famine which pestilence followed. 



Locusts appeared in Franconia in incredible swarms 

 in 1337, and the celebrated "stinking mists" which 

 spread over Italy at the time of the Plague in 1348 were 

 made worse by the odour of putrefying locusts," which 

 had spread from the East to the West." The locusts 

 were regarded as having been summoned by celestial 

 wrath to complete the destruction of mankind which 

 earthquake, famine, and pestilence had begun. In 

 1542 swarms of locusts migrated from the interior 

 of Asia, and travelled across Europe as far north as 

 the Elbe, and as far south as Spain. The Turks were 

 then invading Hungary, and by a natural coincidence 

 brought the plague with them. 



Induced migration of insects offers some curious 

 points in political natural history. At the beginning 



