DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 301 



most probably belonged to this tribe. Linne indeed^ 

 following the opinion of Ray % supposes the caterpillar 

 of the great goat-moth, the anatomy of which has been 

 so wonderfully traced by the eye and pencil of the in- 

 comparablo Lyonet, to be the Cossus. But there seems 

 a strong reason against this opinion ; for Linne's Cos- 

 sus lives most commonly in the willow, Pliny's in the 

 oak ; and the former is a very disagreeable, ugly and 

 fetid larva, not very likely to attract the Roman epi- 

 cures. Probably they were the larvae oi Prionus cori- 

 arius, which I have myself extracted from the oak, or 

 of one of its congeners ^. Tiie grub of Ceramhyx da- 

 micornis, which is the thickness of a man's finger, is 

 eaten at Surinam, in America, and in the West Indies, 

 both by whites and blacks, who empty, wash, and roast 

 them, and find them delicious ''. Mr. Hall informs me, 

 that in Jamaica this grub is called Macauco^ and is in 

 request at the principal tables. A similar insect is 

 dressed at Mauritius under the name of iTibs^toc, which 



^ TViidom of God, 9th ed. SOT. Ray first adopted the opinion here 

 maintained, that the Cossi were the larvse of some beetle ; but afterwards, 

 from observing in the caterpillar of Bombyx Cossus a power of retracting 

 its prolegswithin the body, he conjectured that the hexapod larva from 

 Jamaica, ( Prionus damicorms?) given him by Sir Hans Sloane, might have 

 the same faculty, and so be the caterpillar of a Bombyx. 



'' Amoreiix has collected the different opinions of entomologists on the 

 subject of Pliny's Cossus, which has been supposed the larva of Calandr a 

 Palmarum by Geoffroy ; of Lucanus Cervus by Scopoli; and of Prionus 

 damicorriis by Drury. The first and last, being neither natives of Italy 

 nor inhabiting the oak, are out of the question. The larvae of Lucanus 

 Cervus and Prionus conarius, which are found in the oak as well as in other 

 trees,may each have been eaten under this name, as their difference would 

 not be discernible either to collectors or cooks. Amoreux, 154, 



' Merian Int. Sur. 24. 



