122 LOCUSTID^ — LOCUSTS. 



sua to dry. During this process, which requires two or 

 three days, they must be watched with the utmost care, to 

 prevent the live Locusts from devouring them, if a fliglit 

 should heppen to be passing at the time. When perfectly 

 dry, they are pounded slightly, pressed into bags, or skins, 

 and are ready for transportation. To prepare thera now for 

 present eating, they are pulverized in mortars, and mixed 

 with water sufficient to make a kind of dry pudding. They 

 are, however, sometimes eaten singly without pulverizing, 

 after breaking off the head, wings, and legs. Mr. Robbins 

 considers them nourishing food.^ 



Locusts are sometimes boiled at Wadinoon for food for 

 men and beasts.^ 



The Arabs of Morocco, we learn from Mr. Jackson, 

 esteem Locusts a great delicacy ; and, during the summer 

 of 1799 and the spring of 1800, after the plague had 

 almost depopulated Barbary, dishes of them were served 

 up at the principal repasts. Their usual way of dressing 

 these insects, was to boil them in water half an hour, then 

 sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and fry them, adding a 

 little vinegar. The body of the insect is only eaten, and 

 resembles, according to this gentleman, the taste of prawns. 

 For their stimulating qualities, the Moors prefer them to 

 pigeons. A person may eat a plateful of them containing 

 two or three hundred without any ill effects.^ In another 

 place, however, Mr. Jackson says the poor people, when 

 obliged to live altogether on this kind of food, become mea- 

 ger and indolent.^ 



In Morocco, the price of provisions falls when the Locusts 

 have entered the neighborhood.^ 



The authority of Capt. Riley is, that Locusts are esteemed 

 very good food by the Moors, Arabs, and Jews of Barbary, 

 who catch largo numbers of thera in their season, and throw 

 them, while alive and jumping, into a pan of boiling argan 

 oil, where they are allowed to remain, hissing and frying, 

 till their wings are burned off and their bodies sufficiently 

 cooked ; they are then poured out and eaten. Riley says 



1 Rob. Journal, p. 172. 



2 Ihid., p. 228. 



3 .Jackson's Morocco, p. 104. 

 * lUd., p. 106. 



5 Wand, and Adv. in S. Afr., i. 131 



