ORTHOPTERA. 311 



good food for both men and camels. They are eaten grilled or 

 boiled, or prepared in the kous-koussou, after their legs, wings, and 

 heads have been taken off. Sometimes they are dried in the sun, 

 and reduced to powder, which is mixed with milk, and made into 

 cakes with flour, dripping, or butter and salt. Camels are very fond 

 of them ; and they are given to them after having been dried, or 

 roasted between two layers of ashes. Dried and salted, they are in 

 Asia and in Africa an object of commerce. At Bagdad they some- 

 times cause the price of meat to fall. The taste of their flesh may 

 be compared to that of the crab. Eastern nations have eaten 

 locusts from time immemorial. The Greek comic poet, Aristophanes, 

 tells us, in the " Acharnians," that the Greeks sold them in the 

 markets. Moses allowed to the Jews four species, which are men- 

 tioned in Leviticus. St. John the Baptist, following the example of 

 the prophet Amos, made them his food in the desert, where he 

 found nothing but locusts and a little honey. The wholesomeness of 

 this food was, however, disputed among the ancients. Strabo relates 

 that there existed on the borders of the gulf of Arabia a people 

 called by him Acridophagi, or Locust-eating people ; but they all 

 came to a miserable end. These people procured for themselves 

 locusts by lighting great fires, when the equinoctial winds brought 

 these hosts. Blinded and suffocated by the smoke, the locusts fell 

 to the ground, and were picked up greedily by them, and eaten, 

 fresh or salted. " These locust-eaters," says Strabo, " are, it is true, 

 active, good runners ; but their life never exceeds forty years. As 

 they approach this age, a horrible vermin issues from their bodies, 

 which eats them up, beginning from the belly, and so they die a 

 miserable death." The same tale is to be met with in a description 

 of Admiral Drake's voyage round the world. This traveller speaks 

 of the natives of Ethiopia, who live on locusts, as dying eaten up by 

 winged insects bred in their own bodies. 



It is difficult to explain the origin of such fables. Travellers who 

 have visited Arabia agree in declaring that the locust is a most whole- 

 some article of food ; that it is even fattening. At any rate, it is good 

 food for cattle and poultry. The ancients employed locusts in medi- 

 cine. Dioscorides asserts that the thighs of the locust, reduced to 

 powder, and mixed with the blood of the he-goat, is a cure for 

 leprosy ; and mixed with wine, is a specific against the bite of the 

 scorpion, &c. 



It remains for us to describe some other species of grasshoppers 

 less destructive in their ravages than the Acridium migratorium. 



In the deserts of Egypt is to be met with the great Eremobia, 



