“As the Cossacks of the Black Sea are no agriculturists,” says Jaeger, “but derive their subsistence from their numerous herds of horses, oxen, sheep, goats, and hogs, they suffer immensely, at times, from the ravages of the mosquitoes. Although they are fortunately not seen every year, these blood-suckers may be considered a real Egyptian plague among the herds of these Cossacks; for they soon transform the most delightful plains into a mournful, solitary desert, killing all the beasts, and completely stripping the fields of every animated creature. One thousand of these insatiate tormentors enter the nostrils, ears, eyes, and mouth of the cattle, who shortly after die in convulsions, or from secondary inflammation, or from absolute suffocation. In the small town of Elizabethpol alone, during the month of June, thirty horses, forty foals, seventy oxen, ninety calves, a hundred and fifty hogs, and four hundred sheep were killed by these flies.”[951] Ammianus Marcellinus, in his Roman History, treating of the wild beasts in Mesopotamia, gives us the following curious zoological theory on the destruction of lions by mosquitoes: “The lions wander in countless droves among the beds of rushes on the banks of the rivers of Mesopotamia, and in the jungles, and lie quiet all the winter, which is very mild in that country. But when the warm weather returns, as these regions are exposed to great heat, they are forced out by the vapours, and by the size of the Gnats, with swarms of which every part of that country is filled. And these winged insects attack the eyes, as being both moist and sparkling, sitting on and biting the eyelids; the lions, unable to bear the torture, are either drowned in the rivers, to which they flee for refuge, or else, by frequent scratchings, tear their eyes out themselves with their claws, and then become mad. And if this did not happen, the whole of the East would be overrun with beasts of this kind.”[952]