Paulus Orosius tells us that in the year of the world 3800, during the consulship of M. Plautius Hypsæus, and M. Fulvius Flaccus, such infinite myriads of Locusts were blown from the coast of Africa into the sea and drowned, that being cast upon the shore in immense heaps they emitted a stench greater than could have been produced by the carcasses of one hundred thousand men. A general pestilence of all living creatures followed. And so great was this plague in Numidia, where Micipsa was king, that eighty thousand persons died; and on the sea-coast, near Carthage and Utica, about two hundred thousand were reported to have perished. Thirty thousand soldiers, appointed as the garrison of Africa, and stationed in Utica, were among the number. So violent was the destruction that the bodies of more than fifteen hundred of these soldiers, from one gate of the city, were carried and buried in the same day.[319] St. Augustine also mentions a plague to have arisen in Africa from the same cause, which destroyed no less than eight hundred thousand persons (_octigenta hominum millia_) in the kingdom of Masanissa alone, and many more in the territories bordering upon the sea.[320] Blown from that quarter of the globe, Locusts have occasionally visited both Italy and Spain. The former country was severely ravaged by myriads of these desolating intruders, in the year 591. These were of a larger size than common, as we are informed by Mouffet, who quotes an ancient historian; and from their stench, when cast into the sea, arose a pestilence which carried off near a million of men and cattle.[321] In A.D. 677, Syria and Mesopotamia were overrun by Locusts.[322] “About the year of our Lord 872,” we read in Wanley’s Wonders, “came into France such an innumerable company of Locusts, that the number of them darkened the very light of the sun; they were of extraordinary bigness, had a sixfold order of wings, six feet, and two teeth, the hardness whereof surpassed that of stone. These eat up every green thing in all the fields of France. At last, by the force of the winds, they were carried into the sea (the Baltic) and there drowned; after which, by the agitation of the waves, the dead bodies of them were cast upon the shores, and from the stench of them (together with the famine they had made with their former devouring) there arose so great a plague, that it is verily thought every third person in France died of it.”[323] These Locusts devoured in France, on an average every day, one hundred and forty acres; and their daily marches, or distances of flight, were computed at twenty miles.[324]