Pliny relates that in many places in Greece a law obliged the inhabitants to wage war against the locusts three times a year; that is to say, in their three states of egg, larva, and adult. In the Isle of Lemnos the citizens had to pay as taxes so many measures of locusts. In the year 170 before our era they devastated the environs of Capua. In the year of our Lord 181 they committed great ravages in the north of Italy and in Gaul. In 1690 locusts arrived in Poland and Lithuania by three different ways, and, as it were, in three different bodies. "They were to be found in certain places where they had died," writes the Abbé Ussaris, an eye-witness, "lying on one another in heaps of four feet in height. Those which were alive, perched upon the trees, bending their branches to the ground, so great was their number. The people thought that they had Hebrew letters on their wings. A rabbi professed to be able to read on them words which signified God's wrath. The rains killed these insects: they infected the air; and the cattle, which ate them in the grass, died immediately."
In 1749 locusts stopped the army of Charles XII., King of Sweden, as it was retreating from Bessarabia, on its defeat at Pultowa. The king thought that he was assailed by a hail-storm, when a host of these insects beat violently against his army as it was passing through a defile, so that men and horses were blinded by this living hail, falling from a cloud which hid the sun. The arrival of the locusts had been announced by a whistling sound like that which precedes a tempest; and the noise of their flight quite over-powered the noise made by the Black Sea. All the country round about was soon laid waste on their route. During the same year a great part of Europe was invaded by these pests, the newspapers of the day being full of accounts relating to this public calamity. In 1753 Portugal was attacked by them. This was the year of the earthquake of Lisbon, and all sorts of plagues seemed at this time to rage in that unfortunate country.
In 1780, in Transylvania, their ravages assumed such gigantic proportions that it was found necessary to call in the assistance of the army. Regiments of soldiers gathered them together and enclosed them in sacks. Fifteen hundred persons were employed in crushing, burying, and burning them; but, in spite of all this, their number did not seem to diminish; but a cold wind, which fortunately sprang up, caused them to disappear. In the following spring the plague broke out again, and every one turned out to fight against it. The locusts were swept with great brooms into ditches, in which they were then burnt; not, however, before they had ruined the whole country. Locusts showed themselves at the same time in the empire of Morocco, where they caused a fearful famine. The poor were to be seen wandering on all sides, digging up the roots of vegetables, and eagerly devouring camels' dung, in hopes of finding in it a few undigested grains of barley.
Barrow and Levaillant, in their travels through Central Africa, speak of similar calamities having happened many times between 1784 and 1797. They add that the surface of the rivers was then hidden by the bodies of the locusts, which covered the whole country.
According to Jackson, in 1739 they covered the whole surface of the ground from Tangiers to Mogador. All the region near to the Sahara was ravaged, whilst on the other side of the river El Klos there was not one of these insects. When the wind blew they were driven into the sea, and their carcases occasioned a plague which laid Barbary waste.
India and China often suffer from these destructive insects. In 1735 clouds of locusts hid from the Chinese both the sun and moon. Not only the standing crops, but also the corn in the barns and the clothes in the houses were devoured.
In the south of France locusts multiply sometimes so prodigiously that in a very short time many barrels may be filled with their eggs. They have caused, at different periods, immense damage. It was chiefly in the years 1613, 1805, 1820, 1822, 1824, 1825, 1832, and 1834, that their visits to the south of France were most formidable.
Mézeray relates that in the month of January, 1613, in the reign of Louis XIII., locusts invaded the country around Arles. In seven or eight hours the wheat and crops were devoured to the roots over an extent of country of 15,000 acres. They then crossed over the Rhine, and visited Tarascon and Beaucaire, where they ate the vegetables and lucerne. They then shifted their quarters to Aramon, to Monfrin, to Valabregues, &c., where they were fortunately destroyed in great part by the starlings and other insect-eating birds, which flocked in innumerable numbers to this game.
The consuls of Arles and of Marseilles caused the eggs to be collected. Arles spent, for this object, 25,000 francs, and Marseilles 20,000 francs. Three thousand quintals of eggs were interred or thrown into the Rhône. If we count 1,750,000 eggs per quintal, that will give us a total of 5,250,000,000 of locusts destroyed in the egg, which otherwise would have very soon renewed the ravages of which the country had so lately been the victim. In 1822 were spent again, in Provence, 2,227 francs for the same object. In 1825 were spent 6,200 francs. A reward of 50 centimes was given for every kilogramme of eggs, and half the sum for every kilogramme of insects. The eggs collected were burnt, or else crushed under heavy rollers. The gathering was entrusted to women and children. The operation consisted in dragging along the ground great sheets, the corners of which were held up. The locusts came and settled on these, and were caught by rolling the sheet up.
In the territory of Saintes-Maries, situated not far from Aigues-Mortes, on the Mediterranean coast, 1,518 wheat sacks were filled with dead locusts, amounting in weight to 68,861 kilogrammes; and at Aries 165 sacks, or 6,600 kilogrammes. The rewards given amounted to 5,542 francs; but, notwithstanding all this, the following year the locusts caused still greater damage.