INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 187 



every green thing, after flying oiF to sea they were drowned, 

 and being cast upon the shore they emitted a stench greater 

 than could have been produced by the carcasses of 100,000 

 men.^ 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.^ 



From Africa this plague was occasionally imported into 

 Italy and Spain ; and a historian, quoted in MoufFet, relates 

 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 beasts. In the 

 Venetian territory, also, in 1478, more than 30,000 persons 

 are said to have perished in a famine occasioned by these 

 terrific scourges. Many other instances of their devastations 

 in Europe, in France, Spain, Italy, Germany^, &c., are re- 

 corded by the same author. In 1650, a cloud of them was 

 seen to enter Russia in three different places, which from 

 thence passed over into Poland and Lithuania, where the air 

 was darkened by their numbers. In some places they were 

 seen lying dead heaped one upon another to the depth of four 

 feet ; in others they covered the surface like a black cloth, 

 the trees bent with their weight, and the damage they did 

 exceeded all computation.* At a later period, in Languedoc, 

 when the sun became hot they took wing and fell upon the 

 corn, devouring both leaf and ear, and that with such expe- 

 dition that in three hours they would consume a whole field. 

 After having eaten up the corn, they attacked the vines, the 

 pulse, the wiUows, and lastly the hemp, notwithstanding its 

 bitterness.^ Sir H. Davy informs us^ that the French 

 government in 1813 issued a decree with a view to occasion 

 the destruction of grasshoppers. 



Even this happy island, so remarkably distinguished by its 



1 Oros. contra Pag. 1. v. c. 2. 

 3 Mouffet, 123. 



5 Philos, Trans. 1686. 



6 Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, 233. 



2 Lesser, L. 247. note 46. 

 4 Bingley, iii. 258. 



