green
thing. The effect of the havoc committed by them may be estimated
by the famine they occasioned. St. Augustin mentions a plague of this
kind in Africa, which destroyed no less than 800,000 men in the kingdom
of Massinissa alone, and many more upon the territories bordering upon
the sea. It is also related, that in the year 591 an infinite army of
locusts migrated from Africa into Italy; and, after grievously ravaging
the country, were cast into the sea, when there arose a pestilence from
their stench, which carried off nearly a million of men and beasts.

In the Venetian territory, also, in 1748, more than thirty thousand
persons are said to have perished in a famine occasioned by this
scourge; and other instances are recorded of their devastations in
France, Spain, Italy, Germany, &c. In different parts of Russia also,
Hungary, and Poland, in Arabia and India, and other countries, their
visitations have been periodically experienced. Although they have a
preference for certain plants, yet, when these are consumed, they will
attack almost all the remainder. In the accounts of the invasion of
locusts, the statements which appear most marvellous relate to the
prodigious mass of matter which encumbers the sea wherever they are
blown into it, and the pestilence arising from its putrefaction. Their
dead bodies are said to have been, in some places, heaped one upon
another, to the depth of four feet, in Russia, Poland and Lithuania; and
when, in Southern Africa, they were driven into the sea, by a north-west
wind, they formed, says Barrow, along the shore, for fifty miles, a bank
three or four feet high.[964] But when we consider that forests are
stripped of their foliage, and the earth of its green garment for
thousands of square miles, it may well be supposed that the volume of
animal matter produced may equal that of great herds of quadrupeds and
flights of large birds suddenly precipitated into the sea.

The occurrence of such events, at certain intervals, in hot countries,
like the severe winters and damp summers returning after a series of
years in the temperate zone, may affect the proportional numbers of
almost all classes of animals and plants, and probably prove fatal to
the existence of many which would otherwise thrive there; while, on the
contrary, the same occurrences can scarcely fail to be favorable to
certain species which, if deprived of such aid, might not maintain their
ground.

Although it may us