60 DIRECT BENEFITS FROM MOTHS. 



we take to eating caterpillars, I should, for my own 

 part, be of the mind of the red-breasts, and eat only 

 the naked ones.* But we will see that there is some 

 encouragement from precedent to make a meal of 

 the caterpillars which infest our cabbages and cauli- 

 flowers. Amongst the delicacies of a Boshies-man's 

 table, Span-man reckons those caterpillars from which 

 butterflies proceed.f The Chinese, who waste nothing, 

 after they have unwound the silk from the cocoons 

 of the silk worm, send the chrysalis to table ; they 

 also eat the larva of a Sphinx,;}; some of which tribe, 

 Dr Darwin tells us, are in his opinion very delicious ; 

 and, lastly, the natives of New Holland eat the 

 caterpillars of a species of moth of a singular new 

 genus, to which Alexander M'Leay, Esq. (the colonial 

 secretary, and an eminent naturalist,) has assigned 

 characters, and, from the circumstance of its larva 

 coming out only in the night to feed, has called it 

 Nycterobius. 



A feast of insects is ingeniously described in 

 Herrick's Hesperides, in the following stanzas, as 

 having been enjoyed by Oberon and his queen Titania, 



OBERON'S FEAST. 



Shapcot ! to thee the fairy state 

 I with discretion dedicate ; 

 Because thou prizest things that are 

 Curious and unfamiliar. 



* RAT'S Letter*, 135. f SPAKRMAW, i. 201, 



J Sir G. STACK-TONS' Voyage, iii. 246. Phytologia, 364. 



