304 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



to have been an article of food offered for sale in the 

 markets of Greece^; and on a subject so well known, 

 to quote no other writers, Jackson observes that, when 

 he was in Barbary in 1799, dishes of locusts were gene- 

 rally served up at the principal tables and esteemed a 

 great delicacy. They are preferred by the Moors to 

 pigeons; and a person may eat a platefull of two or 

 three hundred without feeling any ill effects. They 

 usually boil them in water half an hour, (having thrown 

 away the head, wings and legs,) then sprinkle them with 

 salt and pepper, and fry them, adding a little vinegar''. 

 — From this string of authorities you will readily see 

 how idle was the controversy concerning the locusts 

 which formed part of the sustenance of John the Bap- 

 tist, agreeing with Hasselquist% that they could be 

 nothing but the animal locust, so common a food in the 

 East: and how apt even learned men are to perplex a 

 plain question, from ignorance of the customs of other 

 countries. 



In the hemipterous order of insects, none are more 

 widely dispersed, or (if you will forgive me a pun) have 

 made more noise in the world than the Tettigonia tribe. 

 From the time of Homer, who compares the garrulity 

 of age to the chirping of these insects'', they have been 

 celebrated by the poets ; and Anacreon, as you well 

 know, has inscribed a very beautiful little ode to them. 

 We learn from Aristotle, that these insects were eaten 

 by the polished Greeks, and accounted very delicious. 



* Pliny, Hist. Nat. 1. vi. c. SO. 



'' Jackson's Travels in Marocco, 53. The Rev. R. Sheppard caused so.ne 

 of the Locusta viridissima, F. to be cooked in the way here recommended, 

 only substituting butter for vinegar, and found them excellpnt, 



' Travels, 230. " lUm. II. y. 150-4. 



