INSECTS. 415 
abstain from the Cockroach.” And after all there is not any 
more valid reason to urge against eating cockroaches than 
against taking shrimps with tea, after the popular practice 
of Margate. These latter, if fried in their shells, just as 
they leave the sea, have proved delicious, like white-bait, 
and richer, whilst the shells do not become hardened as 
by boiling. For curative purposes the Cockroach has long been 
employed against dropsy by Russian doctors, likewise for Bright’s 
disease of the kidneys; and one of our leading chemists now 
prepares powdered Cockroaches for similar therapeutic uses in 
this country. The insect is nocturnal in its habits, and gives 
off a disagreeable, fetid odour through a fluid poured out from 
its mouth. 
Another class of insects, the Spiders, though never taken as 
food in any form, exercise healing virtues against ague, whilst 
the applied web avails to arrest bleedings ; these are established 
facts. Messrs Kirby & Spence do not hesitate to declare that 
if one could rise above prejudices, he would probably find some 
spiders a delicious morsel as dainty food. The celebrated Anna 
Maria Schurman used to eat spiders like nuts, which, as she 
affirmed, they much resemble in taste. Rosel also speaks of a 
German who was in the habit of spreading spiders like butter 
on his bread. But such practices are open to question as regards 
their wholesomeness, seeing that spiders are carnivorous feeders. 
As the basis of all their bodily structures, spiral tubes, intestines, 
skeleton, hairs, and external scales, insects are endowed with 
chitin (which forms also the bodily framework, and skeleton 
of crabs, lobsters, and shrimps, with other crustacee). It was 
this animal substance in locusts which, with wild honey, con- 
stituted the food of John the Baptist. But such chitin is more 
difficult of digestion than the corresponding gelatin of beef, 
mutton, fish, and poultry ; so that the nightmare which proverbi- 
ally follows a lobster supper in close attendance thereon, is 
probably attributable to this difficulty of chitin solution in the 
stomach. In Othello, Act 1, Sc. 3, we read “‘ The food that to 
him is now as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as 
bitter as Coloquintida,” (Iago to Roderigo). And here probably 
the food of the Locust-tree was referred to, of which the 
seed-pod contains a rich luscious juice closely resembling fresh 
honey. So, with respect to the Locusts upon which John the 
Baptist supported himself in the wilderness, certain critics have _ 
