BENEFICIAL INSECTS 203 



having no anthers, supplies no pollen. The subject is 

 interesting and complex, yet a moment's thought, or, better 

 still, observation, will show that not colour and scent alone, 

 but some other force, instinct, sense, call it what you will, 

 guides the bees in their daily work. 



INSECTS AS HUMAN FOOD 



Of all the ways in which insects have been pressed into 

 the service of man, none are more curious, more foreign to 

 the normal man's outlook on these lowly creatures, than 

 their use as food and as additions to the Materia Medica. 

 True, the Israelites were enjoined by Moses to eat locusts, 

 beetles, and grasshoppers, and it is common knowledge that 

 John the Baptist subsisted in the desert on a diet of locusts 

 and wild honey, despite the fact that certain purists 

 have expended much time and considerable ingenuity in 

 attempting to show that the locusts, in this case, were not 

 insects at all, but the fruit of a leguminous tree. Why 

 any such attempt at prevarication should have been made 

 passes all comprehension, for, to this day, these insects are 

 very highly esteemed in parts of Africa, Arabia, and Persia, 

 where they are bought and sold as an everyday article of 

 commerce. 



According to Pliny and Herodotus, the Parthians and 

 Nasamones both relished locusts as food, whilst, among Moors 

 of the present day, these insects, fried in butter, form a staple 

 and favourite dish. Many of the North American Indian 

 tribes were in the habit of consuming large quantities of the 

 Rocky Mountain locust, an insect of great economic import, 

 seeing that it greedily consumes every green leaf encountered 

 in its wanderings. When the red man was at his zenith, 

 the Rocky Mountain locust was practically innocuous; 

 since his subjugation, it has 'increased and spread to such 

 an extent that it has come to be viewed in the light of a 

 serious pest. According to De Smet, the Assiniboine idea 



