LOCUST-EATEKS. 159 



the West Indies, the French planter gourmand (and sometimes 

 the English, as his copyist), seated at his luxurious table, oiling 

 the hinges of his worn-out appetite with those lumps of insect 

 fatness known as the grubs of the Palm Weevil ; and then 

 turn to the poor degraded Hottentot, squatted on the arid 

 ground, swallowing, by handfuls, White Ants roasted, washed 

 down by Locust soup, or just as often, too hungry or too 

 indolent to dress them, devouring the uncooked Insects.* 



But, after all, none can pronounce these Acridophagi or 

 Locust-eaters, as monsters of singularity in their mode of diet. 

 Was not the "Locust after its kind" expressly allowed for 

 food by the Mosaic Law ; and from the time of its institution 

 even to the present, does not the law of Nature, ever kind and 

 provident, permit this insect scourge of humanity to be con- 

 verted into a medium of supporting human life ? Since in all 

 countries a prey to their ravages, in Syria, Arabia, Persia, 

 Ethiopia, Egypt, and Barbary, locusts are still an article of 

 provision, in more or less extensive use. And from what but 

 prejudice arises our disgust at Insect-feeding? Our king 

 Jamie, of pedantic memory, was said to have pronounced him 

 " a vera valiant man " who first adventured on eating oysters, 

 and truly we opine that he must have been quite as much a 

 hero in his way, as the dweller in Surinam or the Mauritius, 

 who first engulfed a fat Palm Weevil grub. Why should the 

 Frenchman, wiping his mouth after Snail soup, laugh at the 



* Smeathman. 



