The Locusts: their Function 



would have relished a basket of Grass- 

 hoppers. 



Long before him, others were content to 

 eat them, though in this case it was a wise 

 frugality. Clad in his Camel's-hair garment, 

 St. John the Baptist, the bringer of good 

 tidings and the great stirrer of the populace 

 in the days of Herod, lived in the desert on 

 Grasshoppers and wild honey : 



" And his meat was locusts and wild 

 honey," says the Gospel according to St. 

 Matthew. 



Wild honey I know, if only from the pots 

 of the Chalicodoma. 1 It is a very agreeable 

 food. There remains the Grasshopper of 

 the desert, otherwise the Locust. In my 

 youth, like every small boy, I appreciated 

 a Grasshopper's leg, which I used to eat 

 raw. It is not without flavour. To-day let 

 us rise a peg higher and try the fare of Omar 

 and St. John the Baptist. 



I capture some fat Locusts and have them 

 cooked in a very rough and ready fashion, 

 fried with butter and salt, as the Arab 

 author prescribes. We all of us, big and 

 little, partake of the queer dish at dinner. 



1 Cf. The Mason-bees: passim, Translator's Note. 

 365 



