OS GRYLTJD.^— GRASSHOPPERS. 



Gryllidae — Grasshoppers. 



Mr. Hunches, after describing an ash-colored Grasshop- 

 per (which may be his ash-colored cricket before men- 

 tioned),' remarks that the superstitious of the inhaljitants 

 of Barbados are very appreliensive of some approaching 

 illness to the family, whenever this insect flies into their 

 houses in the evening or in the night. '^ 



Athenasus tells us the ancient Greeks used to eat the 

 common Grasshopper and the Monkey-grasshopper as pro- 

 vocatives of the appetite. Aristophanes says : 



How can you, in God's name, like Grasshoppers, 

 Catching them with a reed, and Cercopes?^ 



Turpin tells us there is a kind of brown Grasshopper in 

 Siam. which the natives consider a delicate food.* 



" Fernandus Oniedus declareth furthermore," says Peter 

 Martyr in his History of the West Indies, "that in a cer- 

 tain region called Zenu, lying fourescore and tenne miles 

 from Darrina Eastwarde, they exercise a strange kinde of 

 marchaundize : For in the houses of the inhabitantes they 

 found great chests and baskets, made of twigges and leaves 

 of certaine trees apt for that purpose, being all ful of 

 Grasshoppers, Grilles, Crabbes, Crefishes, Snails also, and 

 Locustes, which destroie the fields of corne, all well dried 

 and salted. Being demanded why they reserved such a 

 multitude of these beastes : they answered, that they kept 

 them to be sowlde (sold) to the borderors, which dwell fur- 

 ther within the lande, and that for the exchange of these 

 pretious birdes, and salted fishes, they received of them 

 certayne straunge thinges, wherein partly they take pleasure, 

 and partly use them for the necessarie affaires."^ 



In the account of the voyages of J. Huighen Linschoten, 

 it is stated that the inhabitants of Cumana eat " horse- 



1 The Grasshopper, however, according to Mr. Hughes' descrip- 

 tion, is twice as large as the cricket; it being two inches, the cricket 

 but one inch, in length. — P. 85 and 90. 



•' Xat. Hist, of Barb., ^. 85. 



3 Athen. Dcipnos, L. 4, c. 12. The Cercope, or Monkey-grasshop- 

 per, was so called from having a long tail like a monkey, cercops. 



* Pinkert. Col of Voij. and Trav., ix. 612. 



5 lltst. of West Indies, p. 121-2. 



