34 REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 
ily bn supposed to be winged creatures of quite another species. Their numbers, too, 
an mi vast that they quite darken the sun. " • • Tboso from Africa are the ones 
which chiefly devastate Italy; and more than once the Roman people have been 
obliged to have recourse to the Sibylline Books to learn what remedies to employ under 
their apprehensions of impending danger. 
This statement of their coining over from Africa has been so generally 
accepted as true by subsequent writers, without investigation as to its 
truth, that we shall hereafter call attention to it, in order to show its im- 
probability. 
Julius Obsequens 4 states that " Before the birth of Christ about 170 
years the pastures of Italy were covered, as it were, with clouds of 
grasshoppers, and about Capua a hundred years thereafter." 
According to Gregory, of Turin, 5 two armies of locusts appeared, which, 
passing through Arvernum, came together in Romaniae, where a great 
battle was fought between the hosts and many slain. No date is given, 
but it appears from fche context to have been about 558. Purchas, who 
quotes the same incident, says that " the two armies passing by Clermont 
into the Roinanaick Territory (a place in France) there fought together, 
where many of them were killed ; when Clotarius was about to fight 
with his son Chrannus." 
The year 593 A. D., following a very severe and general drought, was 
noted for a very general invasion of locusts. 6 The particular sections 
devastated we are unable to ascertain. 
In 852 immense swarms from the eastern regions invaded the west, 
penetrating into Gaul, their daily marches being computed at twenty 
miles a day ; and their flights, as stated, being regulated by leaders who 
flew first and settled on the spot which was to be visited at the same 
hour the next day by the whole legion. These marches were always 
undertaken at sunrise. 7 
Cuspiuian mentions an invasion of Gaul in 874. 8 
In the reign of Basilius, the Emperor (according to Georgius Cedrenus) 
the eastern parts were consumed by grasshoppers to such an extent as 
to compel the inhabitants to sell their children and at last to pass into 
Thrace. But afterwards a vehement wind carried the locusts into the 
Hellespont, but they were thrown back on the sands and, reviving to a 
large extent, wasted the countries adjoining, and Thrace also, for three 
years. 9 
The following chronological account of their migrations in Europe, 
from 874 to 1092, is taken from Keferstein's article before mentioned : 
They visited Italy in 864. 10 In 870 they showed themselves in France 
4 As quoted by Purchas on Insects. The full title of this quaint old work is as follows: "A Theater 
of Politicall Flying Insects, wherein especially the Nature, the Worth, the Work, the Wonder and the 
Manner of Eight-ordering of the Bee is Discovered and Described." London, 1657, p. 197, et seq. 
'Historia Ecclesiastica Francorum, lib. 4, ch. 20. 
'Shaw's "General Zoology," vi, p. 137, probably following Aldrovandus. 
'Shaw, I. c— Purchas on Insects, I. c. — probably quoted from Aldrovandus. 
8 Purchas on Insects. 
'Purchas. 
10 Cantor, Geschichte der merkwiirdigsten Naturbegebenheiten auf unserer Erde, Bd. 2 (1804), 104. 
