214 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



devoured that not the least vestige of green is left in ei- 

 ther a_ g ut it is not necessary for me to enlarge further 



upon a history the circumstances of which are so well 

 known to you. 



To this species of devastation Africa in general seems 

 always to have been peculiarly subject. This may be 

 gathered from the law in Cyrenaica mentioned by Pliny, 

 by which the inhabitants were enjoined to destroy the 

 locusts in three different states, three times in the year 

 —first their eggs, then their young, and lastly the perfect 

 insect 5 . And not without reason was such a law enacted ; 

 for Orosius tells us that in the year of the world 3,800 

 Africa was infested by such infinite myriads of these 

 animals, that having devoured every green thing, after 

 flying off to sea they were drowned, and being cast upon 

 the shore they emitted a stench greater than could have 

 been produced by the carcases of 100,000 men c . St^ 

 Augustine also mentions a plague to have arisen in that 

 country from the same cause, which destroyed no less than 

 800, 000 persons (octingenta hominum millid) in the king- 

 dom of Masanissa alone, and many more in the territories 

 bordering upon the sea d . 



From Africa this plague was occasionally imported into 

 Italy and Spain; and a historian quoted in Mouffet re- 

 lates that in the year 591 an infinite army of locusts of a 

 size unusually large, grievously ravaged part of Italy ; and 

 being at last cast into the sea, from their stench arose a 

 pestilence which carried off near a million of men and 



a Exod. x. 5. 14, 15. b Hist. Nat. I. xi. c. 29. A similar 



law was enacted in Lemnos, by which every one was compelled to 

 bring a certain measure of locusts annually to the magistrates. Plin. 

 ibid. r Oros. contra Pag. I v. c, 2, <> Lesser, L, 247= note 46, 



