LETTER X. 



BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



DIRECT BENEFITS. 



jVlY last letter was devoted to the indirect advantages 

 which we derive from insects; in the present I shall 

 enumerate those of a more direct nature for which we 

 are indebted to them, beginning with their use as the 

 food of man, in which respect they are of more im- 

 portance than you may have conceived. 



One class of animals which, till very lately, have 

 been regarded as belonging to the entomological world, 

 1 mean the Crustacea, consisting principally of the ge- 

 nus Cawcer of Linne, are universally reckoned amongst 

 our greatest dainties; and they who would turn with 

 disgust from a locust or the grub of a beetle, feel no 

 symptoms of nausea when a lobster, crab, or shrinsp is 

 set before them. The fact is, that habit has reconciled us 

 to the eating of these last, which, viewed in themselves 

 with their threatening claws and many feet, are really 

 more disgusting than the former. Had the habit been 

 reversed, we should have viewed the former with ap- 

 petite and the latter with abhorrence, as do the Arabs, 

 " who are as snuch astonished at our eating crabs, lob- 

 iiters, and oysters, as we are at their eating locusts^." 



* Walpole in C'larke's Travels, ii. '81. Even \.r. Bovi? speaks with 

 abhorrence of eating raw oysters. IValton's Jngler. Life, p. 12. 



