AGRICULTURE. 97 



or Pharaoh, is clearly shown by the tenth chapter of Exodus, and is 

 an old story in the churches, and even in the public streets. In 

 the year 170, before Christ, nearly all the pastures -were covered 

 with, as it were, clouds of locusts, and 100 years alter that a great 

 swarm of them covered the whole territory around Capua — Julius 

 Obsequens. In the year 181, after Christ, while a war had been 

 progressing for a long while throughout Illyricum, Gaul, and Italy, 

 and had been finally checked some how or other, in order that 

 nothing might seem to be lacking to the punishment of wicked 

 peoples, locusts, infinite in number and far greater than others, 

 consumed all the herbage everywhere. In the year of our Lord 

 591, while Agilulf was king of the Longobards, an immense swarm 

 of locusts grievously afflicted the country about Trent. These are 

 said to have been brought by force of the winds from Africa. 

 Nevertheless, the greater part of them were submerged in the sea 

 by storms. But they were no less injurious and deadly to the 

 Italians, (on that account,) for, rolled up by the waves on the 

 shores of Cyreae, they caused among the inhabitants such a disease 

 by their pestilential exhalation and odor, that Julius writes that 

 800,000 men and cattle perished by the pestilence. In Venice, 

 likewise, and in the territory around Brescia, not far from Milan, 

 so pitiful a famine ensued, from the loss of the crops, (for the lo- 

 custs had destroyed everything) that in the year 1478, (when this 

 happened) over 30,000 people died. Likewise in the years 593, 

 693 and 811, locusts flying from Africa, after a severe drouth, de- 

 voured the plants and herbage and bark of trees, whence followed 

 a great famine, such as the author of the Naumachia elegantly 



describes in these verses. 



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Nor has Caul (France) been free from their teeth (!) and their 

 gluttony, but in the years 155, 871, 1337, 1353, 1371, was wretch- 

 edly depopulated, and lost very many, even at times a third part 

 of its citizens, cut off by lack of food and consumed by the ensu- 

 ing . pestilence. These generally had six wings, (!!!!) and 

 were wafted thither from the east. But at last driven into 

 the sea of Britainy by tone of the winds, they were overwhelmed 

 by the waves, then driven back on to the beach by the tide they 

 infected the air, and produced a pestilence no less cruel than the 

 famine that they had just been passed through — Otho of F rising en. 

 Moreover, in tin; year 1-17.") they devastated nearly all Poland. In 

 the year 1536 innumerable swarms of locusts were borne by the force 

 of the winds from the Euxine sea into that part of Sarmatia which 

 the moderns call Podolia ; these changing their camping grounds in 

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