28 ANIMALS OF LAND AND SEA 



that these creatures were the favorites of every Greek poet 

 from Homer and Hesiod to Anacreon and Theocritus. To be 

 said to excel a cicada was the highest praise a singer could 

 receive. The music of Plato's eloquence was said to be only 

 comparable to the voice of a cicada. Cicadas meant quite 

 as much to the Greeks as scarabs did to the ancient Egyptians, 

 and golden cicadas were worn by the Greek women in their 

 hair. But in spite of the veneration the Greeks had for the 

 cicadas they fully appreciated their economic value and used 

 them extensively as food, preferring them, like our Indians, 

 just as they emerged from the ground. Cicadas of various 

 sorts were eaten by the Romans, and they are still used for 

 food in many places. 



From the eastern foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains to the Cas- 

 cades and from Oregon to Mexico there lives a rather large moth 

 inconspicuously colored called the Pandora moth, the cater- 

 pillar of which lives on pine trees sometimes, at least in the 

 north, in such numbers as completely to devour all the leaves. 

 This is one of the longest lived of all the moths, as it lives 

 for two years and not for a single year or less hke nearly all 

 the other moths and butterflies. The caterpillars are only 

 about one-third grown when the winter overtakes them. They 

 all climb to the top of the tree and there spin a silken nest, 

 much as the tent caterpillar does in the spring, from which 

 they emerge when the warm weather again sets in. By the 

 next autumn they are fully grown, over two inches long and 

 very fat. The Indians in the regions where they are abundant, 

 for example the Pai-Utes in the Klamath region of Oregon, 

 prize them very highly, collecting great quantities and drying 

 them for winter use. These dried caterpillar mummies are 

 shrivelled, dark red-brown, and oily, and have an interesting 

 rather than an appetizing odor. 



But it is seldom that moths or butterflies are regularly used 

 for food not because of any distaste for them, but because the 

 caterpillars and pupae unless small or covered with hairs or 

 bristles are rarely obtainable in sufflcient quantities to make 



