Anno 126 B.C. Epidemic pestilence prevailed with great mortality in Africa. Orosius, Justin, and Livy, who have described it, attribute this pestilence to the stench arising from the putrid carcases of dead locusts, which were brought over by a strong east wind in such multitudes that they devoured every green thing, even to the bark of trees; they were subsequently driven by a south wind into the Mediterranean, and being again washed on shore in the warm season of the year, putrefied, and produced this awful pestilence, which destroyed 800,000 in Numidia alone. On the sea-coast of Carthage 200,000 perished. Of such terrible visitations by insects, which to this day exist in the East at particular seasons, carrying destruction in their course, Lord Carnarvon gives a description in his ‘History of Portugal and Gallicia.’ It will convey a pretty good idea of their destructiveness and of the distressing consequences. Speaking of natural exhibitions, of which he was an eye-witness in Africa, he writes thus: “A fall of locusts is beyond description the most awful imaginable--a most dreadful scourge, which is considered in eastern and northern countries the most unfailing manifestation of the wrath of God. Travelling along the western coast of Africa, I once beheld this terrible infliction. These creatures fell in thousands and tens of thousands around us and upon us along the sands on which we were riding, and on the sea that was beating at our feet; yet we were removed from their most oppressive influence; for, a few hundred yards to our right, darkening the air, the great innumerable host came on, slowly and steadily advancing in a direct line and in a mighty moving column. The fall of locusts from this central column was so great, that when a cow directly under the line of flight, attempting ineffectually to graze in the field, approached her mouth to the grass, there rose immediately so dense a swarm, that her head was for the moment almost concealed from sight, and as she moved along, bewildered by this worse than Egyptian plague, clouds of locusts rose up from under her feet, visible even at a distance, as clouds of dust when set in motion by the wind on a stormy day. At the extremity of the field I saw the husbandmen bending over their staffs, and gazing with hopeless eyes upon that host of death which swept like a destroying angel over the land, and consigned to ruin all the prospects of the year; for wherever that column winged its flight, beneath its withering influence the golden glories of the harvest perished, and the leafy honours of the forest disappeared. There stood those ruined men silent and motionless, overwhelmed with the magnitude of their calamity, yet conscious of their utter inability to control it, while further on, where some woodland lay in the immediate line of the advancing column, heath set on fire, and trees kindling into a blaze, testified the general horror