DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 303 



stone mortars ; that they mixed this flour with water 

 into a dough, and made their cakes of it, which they 

 baked like their other bread. He adds, that it is not 

 unusual for them to eat locusts when there is no fa- 

 mine ; but then they boil them first a good while in wa- 

 ter, and afterwards stew them with butter into a kind 

 of fricassee of no bad flavour'*. Leo Africanus, as 

 quoted by Bochart, gives a similar account *•. Sparr- 

 man informs us that the Hottentots are highly rejoiced 

 at the arrival of the locusts in their country, although 

 they destroy all its verdure, eating them in such quan- 

 tities as to get visibly fatter than before, and making of 

 their eggs a brown or cofl'ee-coloured soup. He also 

 relates a curious notion which they have with respect 

 to the origin of the locusts — that they proceed from the 

 good will of a great master-conjuror a long way to the 

 north, who, having removed the stone from the mouth 

 of a certain deep pit, lets loose these animals to be food 

 for them*'. This is not unlike the account given by the 

 divine author of the Apocalypse, of the origin of the 

 symbolical locusts, which are said to ascend upon an 

 angel's opening the pit of the abyss**. Clenard, in his 

 letters quoted by Bochart, says that they bring waggon- 

 loads of locusts to Fez, as a usual article of food *'. Ma- 

 jor Moor informs me, that when the cloud of locusts 

 noticed in a former letter visited the Mahratta country, 

 the common people salted and ate them. This was an- 

 ciently the custom with many of the African nations, 

 some of whom also smoked them ^. They appear even 



° Travels, 232. " Hierot. ii. 1. 14. c. 7. * Sparrman, i= 36T. 



" Rev. i.\. 2, 3, • Hievoi. ii, !. 4. r. 7 . 49-2. 



* Pliny., Hist, ^tit. ), vi. c. 30. 



