BENEFICIAL INSECTS 211 



contented with their national beverage, " pulque," prepared 

 from a cactus, manufacture another and no less deadly drink 

 by infusing a tiger beetle, Cicindela curvata, in alcohol. 



To Mexico and to the bugs we must turn for the piece 

 de resistance of all insect food, the Central American 

 counterpart of caviare, so highly prized by the gourmets 

 of the Old World. Three aquatic bugs, Corixa femorale, 

 Corixamercenaria,&nd Notonecta unifasciata, considerately 

 deposit their eggs in large quantities in the streams, and in 

 due season they are collected and eaten with great relish. 



Speaking of the sale of these insects in Mexico City, 

 Froggatt says : " Probably the most curious of the many 

 curious foods on sale in this market were the bags of 

 water-bug eggs, about the size of dust shot. They are 

 obtained in the canals round the city by sinking sheets 

 of matting under water, upon which the eggs are laid in 

 millions. The matting is then shaken over a sheet and 

 all the eggs gathered. These are dried and placed in 

 sacks and sold at so much a pound ; they are known as 

 ' ahuahutl/ and are made into cakes and eaten. 



" There are also large quantities of two species of water- 

 bugs sold in the same manner in the markets. They are 

 collected like shrimps, with nets, in the swamps and 

 marshes, but they are sold to feed the mocking birds, the 

 common cage bird in the Mexican home. Another in- 

 teresting insect is a black fly, the larvae of which swarm 

 in such quantities in the waters of Lake Texcoa, that when 

 they pupate the pupae are collected in bags and used as 

 manure to fertilise the adjoining lands. At certain seasons 

 these flies swarm out in such clouds that they cover the 

 railway track and stop the trains. Another curious insect 

 food is the caterpillar of a hesperid butterfly, which lays 

 her eggs upon the leaves of the Agave americana. These 

 caterpillars burrow into and feed in the tissue of the leaf, 

 and are cut out, placed in little boxes made out of a section 

 of the thick leaf, and sold as a great delicacy." 



