LETTER X. 



BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



DIRECT BENEFITS. 



MY last letter was devoted to the indirect advantages 

 which we derive from insects; in the present I shall 

 enumerate those of a more direct nature for which we 

 are indebted to them, beginning with their use as the 

 food of man, in which respect they are of more impor- 

 tance than you may have conceived. 



One class of animals which, till very lately, have been 

 regarded as belonging to the entomological world, I 

 mean the Crustacea, consisting principally of the genus 

 Cancer of Linne, are universally reckoned amongst our 

 greatest dainties ; and they who would turn with disgust 

 from a locust or the grub of a beetle, feel no symptoms 

 of nausea when a lobster, crab, or shrimp is set before 

 them. The fact is, that habit has reconciled us to the 

 eating of these last, which, viewed in themselves with 

 their threatening claws and many feet, are really more 

 disgusting than the former. Had the habit been reversed, 

 we should have viewed the former with appetite and 

 the latter with abhorrence, as do the Arabs, " who are 

 as much astonished at our eating crabs, lobsters, and 

 oysters, as we are at their eating locusts a ." That this 



a Walpole in Clarke's Travels ,11. 187. Even Mr. Boyle speaks with 

 abhorrence of eating raw oysters. Walton's Angler, Life, p. 12. 



