LOCUST-EATERS. 159 



West Indies, the French planter gourmand (and sometimes the 

 English, as his copyist), seated at his luxurious table, oiling 

 the hinges of his worn-out appetite with those lumps of insect 

 fatness known as the grubs of the Palm Weevil; and then turn 

 to the poor degraded Hottentot, squatted on the arid ground, 

 swallowing, by handfuls, White Ants roasted, washed down by 

 Locust soup, or just as often, too hungry or too indolent to 

 dress them, devouring the uncooked Insects.* 



But, after all, none can pronounce these Acridophagi or 

 Locust-eaters, as monsters of singularity in their mode of diet. 

 Was not "the Locust after its kind* expressly allowed for 

 food by the Mosaic Law ; and from the time of its institution 

 even to the present, does not the law of Nature, ever kind and 

 provident, permit this insect scourge of humanity to be con- 

 verted into a medium of supporting human life ? Since in all 

 countries a prey to their ravages, in Syria, Arabia, Persia, 

 Ethiopia, Egypt, and Barbary, locusts are still an article of 

 provision, in more or less extensive use. And from what 

 but prejudice arises our disgust at Insect-feeding ? Our king 

 Jamie, of pedantic memory, was said to have pronounced 

 him "a vera valiant man" who first adventured on eating 

 oysters, and truly we opine that he must have been quite as 

 much a hero in his way, as the dweller in Surinam or the 

 Mauritius, who first engulfed a fat Palm Weevil grub. 

 Why should the Frenchman, wiping his mouth after Snail soup, 



* Smeathman. 



