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,1 and a place in Africa by locusts;2 that the inhabitants of Gyarus,3 one of the Cyclades, were driven away by mice;4 and the Amunclæ, in Italy, by serpents. There is a vast desert tract on this side of the Æthiopian Cynamolgi,5 the inhabitants of which were exterminated by scorpions and venomous ants.6 and Theophrastus informs us, that the people of Rhœteum7 were driven away by scolopendræ.8 But we must now return to the other kinds of wild beasts.