302 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



eat them as something very exquisite^. A fi'iend of 

 mine, who has resided a good deal in the West Indies, 

 where the palm-grub is called Grugr-u, informs me that 

 the late Sir John La Forey, who was somewhat of an epi- 

 cure, was extremely fond of it when properly cooked. 



The larvae also of the larger species of the Capricorn 

 tribe {Ccramhyx, L. Longicornes, Latr.) are accounted 

 very great delicacies in many countries ; and the Cossus 

 of Pliny, which he tells us the Roman epicures fattened 

 with flour'', most probably belonged to this tribe. Linne 

 indeed, following the opinion of Ray*=, supposes the ca- 

 terpillar of the great goat-moth, the anatomy of which 

 has been so wonderfully traced by the eye and "pencil 

 of the incomparable Lyonet, to be the Cossus. But there 

 seems a strong reason against this opinion ; for Linne's 

 Cossus lives most commonly in the willow, Pliny's in 

 the oak ; and the former is a very disagreeable, ugly and 

 fetid larva, not very likely to attract the Roman epi- 

 cures. Probably they were the larvae of Prio7ms coria- 

 riuSf which I have myself extracted from the oak, or of 

 one of its congeners'*. The grub of P. damicornis, 



' Ins. Siir. 48. '' Hist. Nnl. 1. xvii. c. 24. 



^' Wisdom of God, 9th ed. 307. Ray first adopted the opinion here 

 maintained, that the Cossi were the larv£E of some beetle ; but after- 

 wards, from observing in the caterpillar of Cossus ligniperda a power 

 of retracting its prolegs within the body, he conjectured that the 

 hexapod larva from Jamaica, {Prionus damico7'nis?) given him by 

 Sir Hans Sloane, might have the same faculty, and so be the cater- 

 pillar of a Bombyx. 



^ Amoreux has collected the different opinions of entomologists 

 on the subject of Pliny's Cossus, which has been supposed the larva 

 of Cordi/lia Palwarum by GecfTroy ; of Lticamis Ccrviis by Scopoli ; 

 and of Priomts damicornis by Drury. The first and last, being neither 

 natives of Italy nor inhabiting the oak, are out of the question. The 

 lai-va; ofLucanus Ccrvus and Priomts cor larius, which are found in the 



