THE PALM WEEVIL. 191 



be made, and, as sailors too well know, feeds upon ship-biscuit, 

 and drills it full of holes. Old sailors can never eat a biscuit 

 without mechanically knocking it on the table, a custom which 

 they have learned on long voyages, serving to shake the " mag- 

 gots" out of the biscuit. The meal-worm is the larva of a beetle, 

 called Tenebrio molitor, a long-bodied, small-headed insect, with 

 very long wing-cases, and very slender and rather short antennae. 

 To bird-fanciers it is invaluable, serving to keep in health the 

 nightingale and several other delicate birds, and those who keep 

 vivaria are also indebted to the meal-worm, as affording food to 

 sundry of the lizard tribe. Even the perfect insect will eat the 

 biscuit, and is nearly as voracious as the larva. 



There is a genus of weevils called Calandra, which is remarka- 

 ble for the great diversity of size among its members, some, such 

 as the dreaded grain weevil of England {Calandra granaria), being 

 very small, and scarcely exceeding the eighth of an inch in length ; 

 and another, the Palm Weevil (Calandra palrnarum), being a 

 really large beetle, nearly two inches in length. This insect is 

 equally injurious to the sugar-cane and the palm-tree, the larva 

 burrowing into the centre of the plant and eating away its sub- 

 stance. This larva is very large, very fat, and very heavy, and 

 is slightly curved. The natives consider it as one of their great- 

 est delicacies, and have some peculiar fashion of cooking it. They 

 call it by the name of Grugru. 



While I was examining the beautiful collection of insect habi- 

 tations in the British Museum, a gentleman looked on, and pres- 

 ently pointed to a larva, apparently that of some sphinx-moth, 

 and saying that he knew the insect well, and had often eaten it, 

 stating at the same time that it was taken out of a palm-tree. 

 The label attached to the specimen corroborated this assertion in 

 a measure, for the palm-tree was the locality from which it had 

 been taken. 



This larva, which is called Tuchuto — I spell the name phonet- 

 ically, my informant never having seen the word in print — is eaten 

 either cooked or raw, the latter being the usual method among 

 gourmands, who think that, like an oyster, the Tuchuto ought to 

 be eaten without any aid from the fire. The correct mode of 

 eating it is, to hold it neatly by the head, between the finger and 

 thumb, to put the whole of the body into the mouth, and then to 

 bite it off, just as a strawberry' is eaten, and its flavor much re- 



