CHAP. 43. (29.)—NATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN EXTERMINATED BY ANIMALS.
We have accounts, too, no less remarkable, in reference even to the most contemptible of animals. M. Varro informs us, that a town in Spain was undermined by rabbits, and one in Thessaly, by mice; that the inhabitants of a district in Gaul were driven from their country by frogs,[1790] and a place in Africa by locusts;[1791] that the inhabitants of Gyarus,[1792] one of the Cyclades, were driven away by mice;[1793] and the Amunclæ, in Italy, by serpents. There is a vast desert tract on this side of the Æthiopian Cynamolgi,[1794] the inhabitants of which were exterminated by scorpions and venomous ants.[1795] and Theophrastus informs us, that the people of Rhœteum[1796] were driven away by scolopendræ.[1797] But we must now return to the other kinds of wild beasts.