208 INSECTS AND MAN 



delicacies, as are the caterpillars of a species of sphinx 

 moth. In South India, the pupa of the tassar silk moth, 

 Anthercea paphia, is esteemed. 



The lumbermen of Maine are not averse to a meal of 

 large black wood ants. A red ant, (Ecophylla smaragdina, 

 though possessed of a pungent flavour, is considered a 

 delicacy in Burmah ; whilst Dr A. R. Wallace, in an 

 account of insects used as food by the Indians of the 

 Amazon, says, concerning the red -headed ant, (Ecodoma 

 cephalotes : " It is the female of this destructive creature 

 that furnishes the Indian with a luxurious repast. At a 

 certain season the insects come out of their holes in such 

 numbers that they are caught by basketsful. When this 

 takes place in the neighbourhood of an Indian village, all 

 is stir and excitement ; the young men, women, and children 

 go out to catch 'saubas' with baskets and calabashes, 

 which they soon fill; for, though the female ants have 

 wings, they are very sluggish, and seldom or never fly. 

 The part eaten is the abdomen, which is very rich and 

 fattening from the mass of undeveloped eggs. They are 

 eaten alive, the insect being held by the head as we hold 

 a strawberry by its stalk, and the abdomen being bitten 

 off. The body, the wings and legs are thrown down on the 

 floor, where they continue to crawl along, apparently un- 

 aware of the loss of their posterior extremities. They are 

 kept in calabashes or bottle-shaped baskets, the mouths 

 of which are stopped up with a few leaves, and it is rather 

 a singular sight to see for the first time an Indian taking 

 his breakfast in the ' sauba ' season. He opens the basket, 

 and as the great-winged ants crawl slowly out, he picks 

 them up carefully and transfers them with alternate hand- 

 fuls of farina to his mouth." 



" Termes flavicolle, a large ' white ant/ common in the 

 Amazon, is eaten. In this case it is not the winged female 

 that is eaten, but the great-headed, hard-biting worker, 

 and it is by means of his jaws that the creature is entrapped. 



