THE LOCUSTS OF THE OLD WORLD. 467 



and those plains being here and there full of thickets, they rest in them and choose 

 the highest for shelter. This the Indians know, and approaching softly in the night 

 they set fire to the thicket, -which, with the high winds that reign in those plains, is 

 soon reduced to ashes, and the locusts killed ; of these they make great heaps, and, as 

 they are ready roasted, they have nothing more to do but to grind them to powder, of 

 the flour of which they make a sort of bread which maintains them. 



Ovalle was a Jesuit missionary, a native of Chili, who had resided in 

 these countries for many years, and published his history of Chili at 

 Eome in 1846, an abstract of which appeared in English in Churchill's 

 Collection of Voyages, published in London in 1745.^^^ 



THE LOCUS'J'S OF THE OLD WORLD. 



That the calamities which have befallen the farmers of the West are 

 less grievous than those resulting from locust invasions in the Old 

 World ; that there is a general similarity in the habits of locusts the 

 world over, and tha^t the causes of their migrations are of the same 

 general nature, may be seen by a perusal of the following statements, 

 which we have taken from sources as a rule inaccessible to most readers. 

 For brief popular accounts of the Old World locusts the works of Kirby 

 and Spence, Westwood, and of subsequent compilers may be consulted. 

 The following historical sketch of locust invasions in the Old World is 

 condensed from an article by Eudolf Gottschoff in ^'Unsere Zeit" (Feb- 

 ruary, 1876, Leipzig). The first account after that of Joel, in the Bible, 

 whose remarks apply to Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor, is the 

 statement of Ororius, that in the year of the world 3800 certain regions 

 of North Africa were visited by monstrous swarms j the wind blew them 

 into the sea, and the bodies washed ashore " stank more than the corpses 

 of a hundred thousand men." Another locust plague, resulting in 

 a famine and contagious disorders, according to St. Augustine, oc- 

 curred In the kingdom of Masinissa, and caused the death of about 

 800,000 men. Pliny states that the locusts visited Italy, flying from 

 Africa. In Europe locust invasions have been recorded since 1333, 

 when they appeared in Germany. Mouftet states that in 1478 thecountry 

 about Venice was invaded, and 30,00D people died of famine. In 1725 

 the region about Eome was overrun by locusts. 



In France, swarms appeared at the close of the middle ages. In 1747 

 there was a great invasion of Southern and Middle Europe, especially 

 the shores of the Danube, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania. Be- 

 fore and after this date vast swarms were observed in Africa and Asia. 

 Adanson in 1750 observed them in the Senegal. In 1799, Jackson, in 

 his "Journey through Morocco,'' states that the whole country between 

 Mogador and Tangier, on the borders of the Sahara, was covered with 

 them, and they were in many cases borne into the ocean westward. 



In Eussia, whose southern steppes form the home of the locust, vast 

 swarms in the time of Charles XII, who was then in Bessarabia, came 

 there from the region of the Black Sea. Eussia, Poland, and Hun- 



^»3 A. S. Taylor's MS., received from the Smithsonian Institution. 



