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Show 2S~ DIS$ERT. III. ~ H I S T 0 R Y ' 0 F M E X I C 0. prove at moO: that in fomc places th.e fur(ace of .the ccarth. .is infcCl:ed, as he fays, with putrefaCtion·; but not that the f<nl of Mextco, or that of !Ill America is ll:inking, uncultivated, vittated, and abandoned to itfclf, as is weaklv. ~flerted by M. de Paw:. If fuch . a deduction were jail:, he might alfo .f.'ty, that the foil df the· old cont'ment is bar-rct1, and fl:inks; as in many countries of it th rc are prodigious multitudes of mohll:rous infeCts, noxious reptiles, and vile animals, as itt the Philippine Ines, in many of thofc of the Indian archipelago, in feveral cou11trics of the fouth of A6n, in many of Africa, and even in fome of Europe. The Philipp.ine IHcs are infdl:cc~ with enormous ants, and rrtonfir•ons butterflic ; Japan with fcorpion ; South of Afia and Afric:.t, with fcrpcnts; Egypt, with afps; Guinea and Ethiopia, with armies of ants; Holland with field-rats '; Ukranta, with toads, as M. cle Paw, himfelf aflirms (; ). In Italy, the Campagna di Roma (although peopled fot· fo many ages), with vipers,· Calabria with tarantulas, the /bores of the Adriatic fea with · clouds of gnats; and even in France, the population of which is fo great and fo ancict1t, whofe lands are fo well cultivated, and whofc climate is fo celebrated by the French, there appeared, a few years ago, according to Mr. Buffon, a new fpecies of field mice, larger than the common kind, called by him Surmu!otJ, which have multiplied exceedingly, to the great damage of the fields. Mr. Bazin, in his Compendium of the Hiil:ory of I nfctl:s, numbers feventy-feven fpecies of bugs, which are all found in Paris and its neighbourhood. That large ca}lital, as Mr. Bomare G'tys, fwarms with thofe difguil:ful infetl:s. It is true that there are places in America where the multitude of infects, and filthy vermin, make life irkfome; but we do not know that they have arrived • to fuch excefs of multiplication as to depopulate any place, .at leafl: there cannot be fo many examples produced of this caufe of depopulation in the new as in the old. continent, which ar€ attefted by Theophraftus, Van·o, Pliny ( k ), and other authors. ·The frogs depopulated one place in Gaul, and the locufis another in Africa. .One of the Cyclades, was depopulated by mice; Amiclas, near to Taracina; ~i) Defcnfc des Recherches Philofophiques, f1.1r lee Amcricains, chap. J 3• '{ k) Plitiy Hilt tf:ttllr. lib. viii. cap. 19. " . .. by H I S T 0 R Y 0 F M E X I C 0. by ferpents ; another place, near to Ethiopia, by fcorpions and poifonous ants; and another by fcolopendras; and not fo dill:ant from our own times, the Mauritius was going to have been abandoned on ac. count of the extraordinary multiplication of rats, as we can remember to have read in a French author. With refpeCJ: to the fize of the infcCl:s, reptil es, and fuch animals, M. de Paw makes ufe of the tefiimony of Mr. Dumont, who, in his Memoirs on Loui!iana, fays, that the frogs are fo large there that they weigh thirty-feven French pounds, and their horrid croaking imitates the bellowing of cows. But who can trufl: to that author, particularly after knowing what Mr. de Paw fays, (in his anfwe!' to Don Pernetty, cap. I 7) ·that all thofe who have written about Louitiana from Benepin, LeClerc, and Cav. Tonti, to Dumont, have contradittcd each other fometimes on one and fomctimes on another f1:1bjetl:. We wonder however, that M. de Paw fhould have had the boldnefs to write that thcfe monficrs do not cxifl: in the rcfi of the worlJ. We know ~xtremely .. well that there are neither in the old nor new· continent frogs of thirty-fevcn pounds in weight ; but there are in Alia and Africa ferpents, butterflies, ants, and other animals of fuch monfirous fi.ze, that they exceed all thofe which have bee;1 difcovered in the new worldr In what place of Ar,ncrica has a ferpent of fifty Roman cubit~ in ~engt.B. been feen, fuch as that which was fhewn by Augull:us to the Rornan. people at the public fpetl:aclcs, as hiil:orians affirm (/), or [o gro[s as that which was killed in the Vatican in the ti~ne of the emperor Clau. dius, and atteficd by Pliny, an author almoil: cotemporary, in the belly of which an entire child was found- But, above all, where has there been feen, oven in the moft folitary woods of America, a ferperyt which can in any manner be compared with that moft enorm,ous and pr.odjgious . on,e of .one hundred a11d twenty feet in length, feen in Africa at the time of the fi,r,(l: ,Punic war, and killed with war machines by the army of Attiliu·s Regulus, the !kin and jaw-bqnes of which were preferved in· a t~r1;1pl e of Rome, until the war of N umantia, accorcFng t<l the tefliimonies of Livy, Pliny, and other Rornvn hiftori.:ms? We know very well th-at fome American hittorian fays,. (J) Suetonius in 0 ~aviano Cxfitrc • L 1 2 that ~59 DISSERT. Ill. '--v---1 |