302 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



eat them as something very exquisite 3 . A friend of 

 mine, who has resided a good deal in the West Indies, 

 where the palm-grub is called Grugru, informs me that 

 the late Sir John La Forey, who was somewhat of an epi- 

 cure, was extremely fond of it when properly cooked. 



The larvae also of the larger species of the Capricorn 

 tribe (Cerambyx, L. Longicornes, Latr.) are accounted 

 very great delicacies in many countries ; and the Cossus 

 of Pliny, which he tells us the Roman epicures fattened 

 with flour b , most probably belonged to this tribe. Linne 

 indeed, following the opinion of Ray c , supposes the ca- 

 terpillar of the great goat-moth, the anatomy of which 

 has been so wonderfully traced by the eye and 'pencil 

 of the incomparable Lyonet, to be the Cossus. But there 

 seems a strong reason against this opinion ; for Linne's 

 Cossus lives most commonly in the willow, Pliny's in 

 the oak ; and the former is a very disagreeable, ugly and 

 fetid larva, not very likely to attract the Roman epi- 

 cures. Probably they were the larvae of Prionus coria- 

 rius, which I have myself extracted from the oak, or of 

 one of its congeners d . The grub of P. damicornis^ 



a Ins. Sur. 48. b Hist. Nat. 1. xvii. c. 24. 



c Wisdom of God, 9th ed. 307. Ray first adopted the opinion here 

 maintained, that the Cossi were the larvae of some beetle ; but after- 

 wards, from observing in the caterpillar of Cossus ligniperda a power 

 of retracting its prolegs within the body, he conjectured that the 

 hexapod larva from Jamaica, (Prionus damicornis ?} given him by 

 Sir Hans Sloane, might have the same faculty, and so be the cater- 

 pillar of a Bombyx. 



d Amoreux has collected the different opinions of entomologists 

 on the subject of Pliny's Cossus, which has been supposed the larva 

 of Cordylia Palmarum by Gecffroy ; of Lucanus Cervus by Scopoli ; 

 and of Prionus damicornis by Drury. The first and last, being neither 

 natives of Italy nor inhabiting the oak, are out of the question. The 

 larvae of Lucanus Cervus and Prionus coriarius, which are found in the 



