The authors then proceed to give a short résumé of the various locust plagues under which the earth, over a large part of its surface, has at different times groaned. The first and best authenticated goes back to a very early period—about 4000 B.C.—after which the evidence does not conform quite so strictly to the test demanded of it by the modern scientific spirit. Pliny, however, we are told, “mentions a law in Cyrenaica by which the inhabitants were enjoined to destroy the locusts in three different states, three times in the year—first their eggs, then their young, and lastly the perfect insect. And not without reason was such a law enacted; for Orosius tells us that in the year of the world 3800 Africa was infested by such infinite myriads of these animals that having devoured every green thing, after flying off to sea they were drowned, and being cast upon the shore, they emitted a stench greater than could have been produced by the carcases of 100,000 men (a very confident statement, surely). St. Augustine also mentions a plague as having arisen in that country from the same cause, which destroyed no less than 800,000 persons (_octingenta_ _hominum millia_) in the kingdom of Masanissa alone, and many more in the territories bordering upon the sea.” After this we make a jump to A.D. 591, and find the locusts in Europe. In that year “an infinite army of them, of a size unusually large, grievously ravaged part of Italy; and, being at last cast into the sea, from their stench arose a pestilence which carried off near a million of men and beasts. In the Venetian territory also, in 1478, more than 30,000 persons” (but this seems pitiful) “are said to have perished in a famine occasioned by these terrific scourges.”