DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 307 



No insects are more numerous in this island than the 

 caterpillars of LepidoiHcra : if these could be used in aid 

 of the stock of food in times of scarcity, it might subserve 

 the double purpose of ridding us of a nuisance, and re- 

 lieving the public pressure. Reaumur suggests this mode 

 of diminishing the numbers of destructive caterpillars, 

 speaking of that of Pliisia Gamma, a moth which did 

 such infinite mischief in France in the year 1735*. If 

 however we were to take to eating caterpillars, I should, 

 for my own part, be of the mind of the red-breasts, and 

 eat only the naked ones^. But you will see that there 

 is some encouragement from precedent to make a meal 

 of the caterpillars which infest our cabbages and cauli- 

 flowers. Amongst the delicacies of a Boshies-man's 

 table, Sparrman reckons those caterpillars from which 

 butterflies proceed *=. The Chinese, who waste nothing, 

 after they have unwound the silk from the cocoons of 

 the silkworm, send the chrysalis to table : they also eat 

 the larva of a hawk-moth {Sphinx^\ some of which tribe, 

 Dr. Darwin tells us, are, in his opinion, very delicious^: 

 and lastly, the natives of New Holland eat the caterpil- 

 lars of a species of moth of a singular new genus, to which 

 my friend Alexander MacLeay, Esq., has assigned cha- 

 racters, and, from the circumstance of its larva coming 

 out only in the night to feed, has called it Nycterobius. 



The next order, the Neuroptera, will make us some 

 amends for the meagerness of the last, as it contains the 

 white ant tribe ( Termes), which, in return for the mis- 

 chief it does at certain times, affords an abundant supply 



» Reaum. ii. 341. ^ Rafs Letters, 135. 



' Sparrman, i. 201. " Sir G. Staunton's Voy. iii. 246. 



^ Phytol.ZU. 



X 2 



