JOURNAL 



OF 



ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 



OFFICIAL ORGAN AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGISTS 



Vol. 9 AUGUST, 1916 No. 4 



LACHNOSTERNA LARViE AS A POSSIBLE FOOD SUPPLY 



By L. O. Howard 



This seems a favorable time to consider the question of new and 

 cheap food supplies. With increasing prices of the old staple foods 

 practically all over the world, with many nations facing very serious 

 shortages on account of war conditions, it would seem that practical 

 suggestions concerning any new cheap food should be especially 

 welcome. 



Doubtless many foods now considered excellent were first discovered 

 by starving people. Possibly oysters, clams, snails, crabs, lobster, 

 crawfish and shrimp were first eaten by people who could get no other 

 food. Many things are eaten by semi-civilized people, and even by 

 such nations as the Chinese and Japanese, which Europeans, and es- 

 pecially the Anglo-Saxons, would not think of touching under ordinary' 

 circumstances. 



Many different insects are eaten in barbarous and semi-civilized 

 countries, and it is certain that the Romans at the height of the luxury 

 of the Empire ate certain insect larvae as delicacies. There is in 

 fact a rather extensive literature concerning the edibility of insects, 

 based, however, in the main upon historical facts and upon their 

 use among wild people, and containing few or no accounts of practical 

 experiments under modern conditions.^ 



These facts point out the desirability of just such experiments, and 

 practically all our colleges of agriculture, with their departments 

 of home economics and of entomology, are in excellent position to do 

 just this work. First, the edibility of the principal species abundant 

 enough to furnish a good supply must be tested, and when the edibilitj' 



iMiss Colcord, the Librarian of the Bureau of Entomologj- of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, is preparing a complete bibliography of this subject for 

 publication in the near future. 



