DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 305 



in his letters quoted by Bochart, says that they bring 

 waggon-loads of locusts to Fez, as a usual article of food a . 

 Major Moor informs me, that when the cloud of locusts 

 noticed in a former letter visited the Mahratta country, 

 the common people salted and ate them. This was an- 

 ciently the custom with many of the African nations, 

 some of whom also smoked them b . They appear even 

 to have been an article of food offered for sale in the 

 markets of Greece 6 ; and on a subject so well known, to 

 quote no other writers, Jackson observes that, when he 

 was in Barbary in 1799, dishes of locusts were generally 

 served up at the principal tables and esteemed a great 

 delicacy. They are preferred by the Moors to pigeons; 

 and a person may eat a platefull of two or three hundred 

 without feeling any ill effects. They usually boil them 

 in water half an hour, (having thrown away the head, 

 wings and legs,) then sprinkle them with salt and pep- 

 per, and fry them, adding a little vinegar d . From this 

 string of authorities you will readily see how idle was 

 the controversy concerning the locusts which formed 

 part of the sustenance of John the Baptist, agreeing with 

 Hasselquist e , that they could be nothing but the animal 

 locust, so common a food in the East ; and how apt even 

 learned men are to perplex a plain question, from igno- 

 rance of the customs of other countries. 



In the hemipterous order of insects, none are more 

 widely dispersed, or (if you will forgive me a pun) have 



a Hieroz. ii. 1. 4. c. 7. 492. b Pliny, Hist. Nat. 1. vi. c. 30. 



c Id. ibid. 



d Jackson's Travels in Marocco, 53. The Rev. R. Sheppard caused 

 some of our large English grasshopper (Acrida viridissima) to be 

 cooked in the way here recommended, only substituting butter for 

 vinegar, and found them excellent. e Travels, 230. 



VOL. I. X 



