64 FOOD 



has excreted some saliva, and that this saHva has liquefied 

 the sugar, and it is this sweet solution that the fly sucks into 

 its body. 



One of the most voracious of insects is the sacred beetle, 

 Scarabeus sacer, which was regarded by the Egyptians as an 

 emblem of immortality. This beetle, which exists all round 

 the Mediterranean area, prepares a large ball of animal 

 excreta much larger than itself. This it buries in a hole, 

 and when it begins to eat it its appetite is stupendous. Fabre 

 watched one of these beetles from eight in the morning till 

 eight at night, and it never ceased eating, and its appetite 

 was never satisfied until it had consumed its great sphere of 

 food. At one end it was continuously eating and at the other 

 continuously passing out undigested matter in the form of 

 a long cord. Every 54 seconds this cord was added to, and 

 in the course of the single meal the cord attained a length of 

 three metres. In the course of a dozen hours this sacred 

 beetle digested or at any rate passed through its alimentary 

 canal an amount of nourishment very nearly equal to the 

 volume of its own body. 



Another voracious insect is the female mosquito, which 

 will so gorge itself with blood that it cannot retain it. Whilst 

 it is still pumping in blood at one end, blood is streaming out 

 at the other end. As Dr Johnson said of the school where 

 discij^line was maintained "without recourse to corporal 

 punishment," "But surely, Sir, what they gain at one end 

 they lose at the other." 



Many insects cause great damage to fabrics and food stores. 

 The larva of the clothes-moth devours all sorts of woollen 

 goods, carpets, furs, and sometimes silk. Stored flour and 

 meal are devoured both bv the Mediterranean flour-moth 

 and the meal-moth, and their larvae occur in such quantities 

 in flour-mills that the machinery is sometimes put out of 

 action by them. Similarly, a considerable number of beetles 

 of the genus Tenehrio consume all kinds of grain and cereals. 

 The roof of the Great Hall of Westminster has been almost 

 destroyed by the larvae of a beetle known as the death-watch, 

 Xestohium tessellatum. There were holes in its gigantic beams 

 so big that you could have put a child into them. The 



