Jeremiah (chap, iv., vss. 11 and 13), in describing the approach of the armies of Babylon, compares them to the drying, parching, scorching, and blasting winds of Egypt, Africa, Arabia, and Asia, which wither and destroy the fruit of the earth, melting and oppressing all living creatures; and he likens them to clouds of dust and whirlwinds traversing those pestiferous countries of the East, where the heat and drought, the dews and damps, heavy rains, the cold north winds of winter and spring, succeeded by the suffocating heats of summer and autumn, generate pestilence and cutaneous diseases. In turning to the history of Egypt,--to this day a hot-bed of pestilence,--we have graphically pictured a series of events occurring and ending in the production of pestilential disease. The waters of the rivers were first turned red, the fish died, and stank therein, causing putrefaction of their bodies, while the waters became unfit for use, either by men or beasts: secondly, swarms of frogs infected the land, penetrating into the very houses; these were succeeded by a host of insects, lice, flies, &c.: thirdly, the beasts of the field suffered from murrain; and finally, man suffered from boils, blains, &c. If we look into the topography of Egypt, we shall find abundant causes to account for its great and continued insalubrity;--the whole country lies near the tropic of Cancer; it is bounded towards the east by the Red Sea, on the west by the deserts of Libya, on the north by the Mediterranean, and on the south by Abyssinia or Upper Ethiopia. All the lower country is encompassed by the arms of the Nile, and is inundated annually by that father of rivers, when it overflows: it rises twenty-four feet in perpendicular height at the medium increase of four inches daily, and it continues from the end of June to the beginning of September, when it begins gradually to subside. The inhabitants sow their corn and vegetables in October and November, immediately after the retiring of the waters; their harvest-time is in March and April. Volney observes that the surface of the land successively assumes the appearance of an ocean of fresh water, of a miry morass, of a green level plain, and of a parched desert of sand and dust, and all in such rapid succession that it can never be otherwise than insalubrious.