In 1271, all the cornfields of Milan were destroyed; and in the year 1339, all those of Lombardy.[325] We read in Bateman’s Doome, that in 1476, “grasshoppers and the great rising of the river Isula did spoyle al Poland.” A famine took place in the Venetian territory in 1478, occasioned by these terrific scourges, in which thirty thousand persons are reported to have perished. Mouffet mentions many other instances of their devastations in Europe,--in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany.[326] A passage of Locusts in France, in 1613, entirely cut up, even to the very roots, more than fifteen thousand acres of corn in the neighborhood of Arles, and had even penetrated into the barns and granaries, when, as it were by Providence, many hundreds of birds, especially starlings, came to diminish their numbers. Notwithstanding this, nothing could be more astonishing than their multiplication, for the fecundity of the Locust is very remarkable. Upon an order issued by government, for the collection of their eggs, more than three thousand measures were collected, from each of which, it was calculated, would have issued nearly two millions of young ones.[327] In 1650, they entered Russia, in immense divisions, in three different places; thence passed over into Poland and Lithuania, where the air was darkened by their numbers. In many parts they lay dead to the depth of four feet. Sometimes they covered the surface of the earth like a dark cloud, loaded the trees, and the destruction which they produced exceeded all calculation.[328] In 1645, immense swarms visited the islands of Formosa and Tayowan, and caused such a famine that eight thousand persons died of hunger.[329] “In 1649,” says Sir Hans Sloane, “the Locusts destroyed all the products of the island of Teneriffe. They came from the coast of Barbary, the wind being a Levant thence. They flew as far as they could, then one alighted in the sea, and another on it, so that one after another they made a heap as big as the greatest ship above water, and were esteemed almost as many under. Those above water, next day, after the sun’s refreshing them, took flight again, and came in clouds to the island, whence the inhabitants had perceived them in the air, and had gathered all the soldiers of the island and of Laguna together, being 7 or 8000 men, who laying aside their arms, some took bags, some spades, and having notice by their scouts from the hills when they alighted, they went straight thither, made trenches, and brought their bags full, and covered them with mould.... After two months fruitless management of them in this manner, the ecclesiastics took them in hand by penances, etc. But all would not do: the Locusts staid their four months; cattle eat them and died, and so did several men, and others stuck out in botches. The other Canary islands were so troubled, also, that they were forced to bury their provisions. They were troubled forty years before with the like calamity.”[330]