In Upper Italy such considerable floods occurred in all the river districts, in the year 1527, that the astrologers announced a new Deluge. There was a repetition of them to an equal extent, and with equal damage, in the following year, so that it may have been concluded, not without some ground, that there was an accumulation of snow on the highest mountain ranges of Europe. On the 3rd of July, 1529, there followed a violent earthquake in Upper Italy, and immediately afterwards a blood-rain, as it was called, in Cremona[539]. In October, 1530, the Tiber rose so much above its banks that in Rome and its neighbourhood about 12,000 people were drowned. A month later, in the Netherlands, the sea broke through the dykes, and Holland, Zealand, and Brabant suffered very considerably from the overflow of the waters, which again took place two years afterwards[540]. In 1528 there appeared in the March of Brandenburg, during the prevalence of a south-east wind and a great drought[541], (the rains did not commence in Germany before 1529,) _swarms of locusts_[542], as if this prognostic too of great epidemics was not to be wanting. Of fiery meteors, which also frequently appeared in the following years, and in the aggregate plainly indicated an unusual condition of the atmosphere, much notice, after the manner of the times, is occasionally taken[543]. Particular attention was excited by a long fiery train which was seen on the 7th of January, 1529, at seven o’clock in the morning, throughout Mecklenburg and Pomerania[544]. Another fiery sign (chasma) was seen in the March on the 9th of January, at ten o’clock at night[545], as likewise similar atmospherical phenomena in other localities. Comets appeared in the course of this year in unusual number[546]. The first on the 11th of August, 1527, before daybreak; it was seen throughout Europe, and it has often been confounded by more recent writers with an atmospherical phenomenon resembling a comet which appeared on the 11th of October[547]. The second was seen in July and August, 1529, in Germany, France, and Italy. Four other comets are also said to have made their appearance this year at the same time; but it is probable that these were only fiery meteors of an unknown kind[548]. The third was in 1531, and was visible in Europe from the 1st of August till the 3rd of September. This was the great comet of Halley, which returned in the year 1835[549]. The fourth was in 1532, visible from the 2nd of October to the 8th of November; it appeared again in 1661[550]. Lastly, the fifth, in 1533, seen from the middle of June till August[551].