<>N THE FLIGHT OF LOCUSTS. 
Alani, which overflowed the vast provinces of the Roman Empire to find those means 
of sustaining life which were denied them in their own sterile countries, and the fre- 
quent invasions of Southern Asia by the Tartars, of which history is full, besides 
many other invasions buried in the obscurity of antiquity, all point to the same con 
elusion. Just like the wandering bands of foxes and wild boars from the north, which 
scattered themselves over vast spaces to gather prey in greater abundance, so much 
more naturally have those terrible swarms of locusts taken up their course from Tar- 
tarv and Arabia to inundate the plains of India, of Palestine, of Poland, of Spain, and 
of Italy, devouring all vegetation in their path. Traveling in such countless masses, 
destroying vegetable sustenance throughout an entire region, and the need of alimen- 
tation compelling them to go to new places to find fresh food, they thus migrate from 
land to land. 
* * # # # # * 
All the governments of Europe strive to protect their people from the famine and 
pestilence which these insects cause, living or dead; and Spain especially, whose 
southern provinces appear to be permanently infected, has always promulgated stand- 
ing orders to gather boxes full of eggs, and cause them to be consigned to commissions 
charged with burying them in deep ditches. And in the " Recreations tlre'es de Vhisioire 
naturelle des insecies" we read that upon the passage of the locusts into France in 1613 
they swept completely over fifteen arpeuts of grain in the environs of Aries, and even 
penetrated the granaries, when many hundreds of birds, and especially of starlings, 
as if commissioned by Divine Providence, began to labor for their diminution; not- 
withstanding which happy event, orders were issued by the government requiring that 
their eggs should be collected, of which more than three thousand measures were 
gathered, each one of which was estimated to be capable of producing nearly two 
million locusts. 
At another migration of locusts, which took place in a portion of Bautzhhla, in Tran- 
sylvania, in 1780, with the view of preventing the terrible consequences which might 
ensue, orders were issued to fifteen hundred persons, each of whom was required to 
gather a full sack of locusts, which were in part crushed, in part burned, or buried; 
and yet the diminution of their numbers would have been scarcely noticeable but for 
a sharp frost that supervened. In the following spring there were millions of boxes 
of eggs disinterred and destroyed by the people, who gathered, as it were, en masse for 
this operation ; and yet, in spite of all this, there were very extensive districts in which 
the soil was covered with young locusts so completely as not to leave a single spot 
bare. 
The desolations sometimes occasioned by locusts in our Puglia Daunia at different 
epochs are very remarkable. Omitting the more remote periods of antiquity, and 
passing by the less destructive ravages, we come to the year 1231, in which these most 
pernicious insects compelled the wise Emperor Frederick II to promulgate a special 
law, by which it was ordained that every agriculturist, during the invasion of these 
little animals, should collect every morning, at the rising of the sun, four measnres, 
and present them to the magistrate, who was required to have them burned. Of the 
year 1541, wrote Eovero Pontano : " In the summer of this year a great army of locusts 
flew through Germany into Italy towards our region. Wherever this swarm extended 
it devoured everything in its path, for the locusts were very large and numerous." 
So great were the injuries caused in 1571 in this country by the locusts, that the 
Vice-Duke of Alcala, D. Perafante de Eibera, was obliged to put forth, by the vote 
and advice of the Royal Council, on the 8th of October, 1572, the first pragmatic de- 
cree, De Bruchis, Title 23, by which it was ordered that the communes should appoint 
experts and practical men to explore their territories, and to search out all the places 
in which the locusts had deposited their eggs; and when found they were to dig 
trenches in the months of September and October, through which operation the eggs 
might be destroyed. And in the month of April the swine are turned loose to devour 
the locusts, of which they are very gluttonous. The housewives also spread sheets 
or pieces of cloth at convenient times, long and large, upon which the locusts alight- 
ing are folded up and entrapped. 
The province of Puglia was inundated in the year 1662, and all the cultivated fields 
destroyed; insomuch that Vicerfe, the Count of Peneranda, not only accorded to the 
tenants of the soil a general release from the rents due that year, but also deducted a 
portion of that of the year following, an indulgence which it became necessary to grant 
for several subsequent years. Puglia Daunia was again invaded in the year 1727, and 
the whole country ravaged. And, finally, they appeared again in this country in 1759, 
when D. Antonio Belli was governor of the customs; and on the 14th of August of the 
same year appeared orders similar to those of the Duke of Alcala, above referred to, 
to which was added a command to burn the straw in all places infested by the locusts. 
In the years 1770 and 1771 they frequented the provinces of Bari, Matera, and Lecce, 
and the governor ordered that the magistrates should adopt the most efficacious meas- 
ures for their extirpation, and especially those prescribed by the president, Belli, and 
that handsome rewards should be paid to those who should use the greatest diligence 
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