INSECTS AND MANKIND 441 



millions in certain localities in Victoria ; ... it formed an 

 important article of food with the aborigines." Termites 

 are eaten by hill-tribes in India and by other primitive 

 races ; certainly a queen-termite with her thousands of 

 contained eggs must be admitted to furnish a highly 

 nutritious form of diet. Large grasshoppers and locusts 

 have been eaten from early times in the Mediterranean 

 basin as well as in North America, where some of the tribes 

 of Redmen, according to Folsom, regarded as '' especially 

 delicious ... a bushel of grasshoppers roasted in a hole 

 in the ground." J. M. Aldrich describes how an Indian 

 tribe of California gathers every other year to collect the 

 large pine-feeding caterpillars of a saturnid moth, Color adia 

 pandora. These, dried and preserved for eating, are said 

 to taste like linseed oil. Wliile the use of insects them- 

 selves as food has never been practised by a large proportion 

 of the human race, the insect-product honey has served as 

 a valued food in almost all parts of the world among all 

 races through thousands of years of human history. 



Reference has already been made to the acquaintance 

 with the bee displayed by the ancient Egyptian sculptors 

 and scribes, who took the insect as a symbol of royalty. 

 It is well known that the mother of a bee community was 

 until a century and a half ago regarded as a male and de- 

 scribed as the '' king " of the hive, or as in Shakespeare *s 

 familiar description {Henry F. i), the 



"... emperor 

 Who, busied in his majesty, surveys 

 The singing masons building roofs of gold, 

 The civil citizens kneading up the honey, 

 The dull mechanic porters, crowding in 

 Their heavy burden at the narrow gate." 



Through the long centuries when the sugar-cane was 

 unknown to the peoples of Europe and the Mediterranean 

 basin, the honey of bees was the source of all luxuriously 

 sweet food. It is no wonder therefore that the honey bee 

 was highly valued by the ancients, communities of these 

 insects being domesticated and preserved in hives several 



