DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 173 



bouche, might be added to our entremets. This would be one means of 

 keeping down the numbers of these occasionally destructive animals. The 

 Mexican Indians, according to M. Vasselet and Madame Salle and her 

 son, who have transmitted such numbers of fine insects from Mexico to 

 M. Chevrolat of Paris, prepare a liquor from a beetle (Cicindela curvata) 

 by macerating it in water or spirit, which they apparently use as a stimu- 

 lating beverage. 1 



In the next order of insects, the Orthoptera, the Gryllus, or locust tribe, 

 as they are the greatest destroyers of food, so as some recompense they 

 furnish a considerable supply of it to numerous nations. They are re- 

 corded to have done this from the most remote antiquity, some Ethiopian 

 tribes having been named from this circumstance Acridophagi([ocust-eaters)* 

 Pliny also relates that they were in high esteem as meat amongst the Par- 

 thians. 3 Hasselquist, in reply to some inquiries which he made on this 

 subject with respect to the Arabs, was informed that at Mecca, when there 

 was a scarcity of corn, as a substitute for flour they would grind locusts in 

 their hand-mills, or pound them in stone mortars ; that they mixed this 

 flour with water into a dough, and make their cakes of it, which they 

 baked like their other bread. He adds, that it is not unusual for them to 

 eat locusts when there is no famine ; but then they boil them first a good 

 while in water, and afterwards stew them with butter into a kind of fri- 

 cassee of no bad flavour. 4 Leo Africanus, as quoted by Bochart, gives 

 a similar account. 5 Sparrman informs us that the Hottentots are highly 

 rejoiced at the arrival of the locusts in their country, although they 

 destroy all its verdure, eating them in such quantities as to get visibly 

 fatter than before, and making of their eggs a brown or coffee-coloured 

 soup. He also relates a curious notion which they have with respect to 

 the origin of the locusts that they proceed from the good-will of a great 

 master-conjuror a long way to the north, who having removed the stone 

 from the mouth of a certain deep pit, lets loose these animals to be food 

 for them. 6 This is not unlike the account given by the author of the 

 Apocalypse, of the origin of the symbolical locusts, which are said to 

 ascend upon an angel's opening the pit of the abyss. 7 Clenard, in his let- 

 ters quoted by Bochart, says that they bring waggon-loads of locusts to 

 Fez, as a usual article of food. 8 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 anciently the custom 

 with many of the African nations, some of whom also smoked them. 9 They 

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

 of Greece 10 ; 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 deli- 

 cacy. They are preferred by the Moors to pigeons ; and a person may 

 eat a plateful of two or three hundred without feeling any ill effects. They 

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



Silbermann, Revue Entom. i. 238. 



Diod. Sic. 1. iii. c. 29. Strabonis Geog. 1. xvi. &c. 



Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 29. * Travels, 232. * Hieroz. ii. 1. 14. c. 7. 



Sparrman, i. 367. 7 Rev. ix. 2, 3. 



Hieroz. ii. 1. 4. c. 7. 492. 9 Pliny, Hist. Nat. 1. vi. c. 30. 



Id. ibid. 



