DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 209 



pepper, and fry them, adding a little vinegar.^ From this string of 

 authorities you will readily see how idle was the controversy concerning 

 the locusts which formed part of the sustenance of John the Baptist, 

 agreeing with Hasselquist^, that they could be nothing but the animal 

 locust, so common a food in the East ; and how apt even learned men 

 are to perplex a plain question, from ignorance of the customs of other 

 countries. 



In the hemipierous order of insects, none are more widely dispersed, or 

 (if you will forgive me a pun) have made more noise in the world, than 

 the Cicada tribe. From the time of Homer, who compares the garrulity 

 of age to the chirping of these insects^, they have been celebrated by the 

 poets ; and Anacreon, as you well know, has inscribed a very beautiful little 

 ode to them. We learn from Aristotle, that these insects were eaten by 

 the polished Greeks, and accounted very delicious. The worm (larval, 

 he says, lives in the earth where it takes its growth : that it then becomes 

 a Teitigometra (pupa), when he observes they are most delicious, just 

 before they burst from their covering. From this state they change to the 

 Tettix or Cicada, when the males at first have the best flavor; but after 

 impregnation the females are preferred on account of their white eggs."* 

 Athen^us also and Aristophanes mention their being eaten ; and ^lian is 

 extremely angry with the men of his age, that an animal sacred to the 

 Muses should be strung, sold, and greedily devoured.^ Pliny tells us that 

 the nations of the East, even the Parthians, whose wealth was abundant, 

 use them as food.^ The imago of the Cicada septemdecim is still eaten 

 by the Indians in America, who pluck off the wings and boil them''' ; and 

 the aborigines of New South Wales, as we learn from Mr. Bennett, for- 

 merly used various species of the Cicadidce as food, stripping off the wings 

 and eating them raw. They are aware that the sounds made by these 

 insects which they call galang-galang, are peculiar to the males, and de- 

 pend upon their drums, observing to Mr. Bennett, in their peculiar Eng- 

 lish, " Old woman galang-galang no got, no make a noise."* 



This ancient Greek taste for Cicada seems now much gone out of 

 fashion ; but perhaps if it were revived in those countries where the insects 

 are to be found, for they inhabit only warm climates^, it would be ascer- 

 tained that so polished a people did not relish them without reason. 



No insects are more numerous in this island than the caterpillars of 

 Lepidoptera : 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 relieving the public pressure. Reaumur suggests this mode of 

 diminishing the numbers of destructive caterpillars, speaking of that of 

 Plusia Gamme, a moth which did such infinite mischief in France in the 

 year 1735."' If, however, we were to take to eating caterpillars, I should 



> Jackson's Travels in Marocco, 53. The Rev. R. Sheppard caused some o( our large 

 Englisli e:rasshoppers {Acrida viridissima) to be cooked in the way here recommended, only 

 substituting butter for vinegar, and found ihem excellent. 



2 Travels, 230. ^ Horn. Jl. y. 150—154. " Arist. Tlist. An. 1. v. c. 30. 



Vide Bochart, Hieroz. ii. 1. 4. c. 7. 491. 



Hi-st. Nat. 1. xi. c. 26. ^ P. Collinson in Phil. Trans. 1763. n. x. 



* Bennett's Wanderings in New South Wales, i. 237., quoted in Entom. Mag. iii. 211. 

 ' One species however has been found in Hampshire in the New Forest. See Samouelle's 

 Entomologist'' s Useful Compendium, t. 5. f. 2. 

 >" Reaum. ii. 341. 



18* 



