266 Journal New York Entomological Society. [Voi. xviii. 



were thrown into a large tray filled with burning cinders, in which 

 they were tossed about until roasted. Roasted ants were preserved 

 in bags for future consumption."* 



De Smetf avers that " The Soshoco (probably a Shoshonean 

 tribe) who subsists chiefly on grasshoppers and ants, is miserable, 

 lean, weak and badly clothed." 



" The principal portion of the Shoshoco territory is covered with 

 wormwood, and other species of artemesia, in which the grasshoppers 

 swarm by myriads; these parts are consequently most frequented by 

 this tribe. When they are sufficiently numerous, they hunt together. 

 They begin by digging a hole, ten or twelve feet in diameter, by 

 four or five deep; then, armed with long branches of artemesia, 

 they surround a field of four or five acres more or less, according 

 to the number of persons who are engaged in it. They stand about 

 twenty feet apart and their whole work is to beat the ground, so as 

 to frighten up the grasshoppers and make them bound forward. 

 They chase them toward the center by degrees — that is, into the hole 

 prepared for their reception. Their number is so considerable that 

 frequently three or four acres furnish grasshoppers sufficient to fill 

 the reservoir or hole. The Soshocos stay in that place as long as this 

 sort of provision lasts. Some eat the grasshoppers in soup, or boiled; 

 others crush them, and make a kind of paste from them which they 

 dry in the sun or before the fire: others eat them en appalas — that is, 

 they make pointed rods and string the largest ones on them; after- 

 wards these rods are fixed in the ground before the fire, and, as 

 they become roasted, the poor Soshocos regale themselves until the 

 whole are devoured." 



The Maidu, a Pujunan tribe of California, according to Dixon:}: 

 were also insectivorous to some extent. " Grasshoppers and locusts 

 were eaten eagerly when they were to be had. The usual method of 

 gathering them was to dig a large, shallow pit, in some meadow or 

 flat, and then, by setting fire to the grass on all sides, to drive .the 

 insects into the pit. Their wings being burned off by the flames, 



* Lowie, The Northern Shoshone, Anthropological Papers of the Amer- 

 ican Museum of Natural History, Vol. II, Part III, p. 183. 



t Father De Smet's Life and Travels among the North American Indians 

 (Chittenden and Richardson), p. 1032. 



t Bulletin American Museum of Natural History, Volume XVII, Part 

 III, p. 120. 



