LOCUSTS AS FOOD FOR MAN. 535 



sculptures deposited in the British Museum represents men carrying 

 different kinds of meat to some festival, and among them some carry- 

 ing long sticks, to which locusts are tied, thus showing that they were 

 of sufficient importance to form part of a public feast. 



Locusts have been, and are yet, extensively employed as an article 

 of food in parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Romans are said 

 to have roasted them to a bright golden yellow before eating them ; 

 and in Russia they are salted or smoked like herrings. Pliny says 

 that locusts were highly esteemed by the Parthians; Herodotus speaks 

 of a tribe of Ethiopians that fed on locusts; and the records of their 

 use in ancient times as food, in both Southern Europe and Asia, are 

 abundant. At the present day this use still continues. 



Riley, in his narrative,* says: "Locusts are esteemed very good 

 food by the Moors, Arabs, and Jews, in Barbary, who catch large 

 numbers of them in their season, and throw them, while jumping 

 alive, into a pan of boiling argan oil ; here they hiss and fry until 

 their wings are burned off, and their bodies are sufficiently cooked, 

 when they are poured out and eaten. I have seen many thousands 

 cooked in this manner, and have had the curiosity to taste them ; 

 they resemble, in consistence and flavor, the yolks of hard-boiled 

 eggs." 



The Riff Arabs, when they see a swarm of locusts hovering in the 

 air and clouding the sky, watch them with anxiety, and when they 

 descend near their habitations they receive them with shouts of grati- 

 tude to God and Mohammed, throw themselves on the ground, and col- 

 lect them as fast as possible. The locusts, deprived of their heads, 

 legs, and wings, are well boiled in butter, and served up with a sub- 

 stance called alcuzcuz. The Riff Arabs consider them delicious 

 food. Their camels also eat them greedily. The Moors use them to 

 this day, by first boiling and then frying them. The Moorish Jews, 

 more provident than their Mussulman neighbors, salt them and keep 

 them for making a dish called dafina which forms the Saturday's 

 dinner of the Jewish inhabitants. This dish is made by putting meat, 

 fish, eggs, tomatoes, locusts, " in fact, almost anything edible, into a 

 jar, placing the latter in an oven on Friday night, and then taking it 

 out hot on the Sabbath." In this manner the orthodox Hebrew gets 

 a hot dinner without committing the sin of lighting a fire upon that 

 day. 



The Indians of California and the Great Basin also collect locusts 

 for food. The Digger Indians roast them and grind or pound them 

 into a sort of flour, which they mix with pounded acorns, the nuts of 

 the pinon-pine, or with berries. This mixture they make into cakes 

 and dry in the sun for future use. 



Among the other uses to which locusts are applied is fish-bait for 

 the sardine-fisheries off the coast of Spain ; and similar bait might be 



* Published in 1859. 



