306 dihect benefits derived from insects. 



If however we were to take to eating caterpillars, I 

 should, for my own part, be of the mind of the red- 

 breasts, and eat only the naked ones'*. But you will 

 see that there is some encouragement from precedent 

 to make a meal of the caterpillars which infest our cab- 

 bages and cauliflowers. Amongst the delicacies of a 

 Boshies-man's table, Sparrman reckons those caterpil- 

 lars from which butterflies proceed''. The Chinese, 

 who waste nothing, after they have unwound the silk 

 from the cocoons of the silk- worm, send the chrysalis to 

 table : they also eat the larvee of a hawk-moth ( Sphinx '^), 

 some of which tribe. Dr. Darwin tells us, are, in his 

 opinion, very delicious*^ : and lastly, the natives of New 

 Holland eat the caterpillars of a species of moth of a 

 singular new genus, to which my friend Alexander 

 MacLeay, Esq., has assigned characters, and, from the 

 circumstance of its larva coming out only in the night 

 to feed, has called it Ni/cterohius. 



The next order, the Neuroptera.^ will make us some 

 amends for the meagerness of the last, as it contains the 

 white ant tribe {Termes), which, in return for the mis- 

 chief it does at certain times, affords an abundant sup- 

 ply of food to some of the African nations. The Hot- 

 tentots eat them boiled and raw, and soon get into good 

 condition upon this food*^. Kcinig, quoted by Smeath- 

 nian, says that in some parts of the East Indies the na- 

 tives make two holes in the nests of the white ants, one 

 to the windward and the other to the leevvard, placing 

 at the latter opening a pot rubbed with an aromatic 

 herb, to receive the insects driven out of their nest by 



* Ray's Letters, 135. * Sparrman, i. 201. 



^ Sir G. Staiiiitoirs Yoij. iii. 24y. * Phytol 364. * Sparrman. i. 363. 



