1S98.J 173 



AN ECONOMIC USE FOR WATERBUGS. 

 BY G. W. KIRKALDT, F.E.S. 



The use of certain waterbugs, in the egg stage and in the perfect 

 state, as food both for man and for birds, &c., is no new thing. As 

 early as 1625 Thomas Gage, a traveller in Mexico, mentions the sale 

 of cakes made of a " kind of froth " from the Mexican lakes, which 

 had an extensive sale amongst the inhabitants, a custom which had 

 doubtless descended from a remote antiquity. In 1832 Thomas Say, 

 in his description of a new American species of Corixa (Heteropterous 

 Hemiptera, p. 39), states that the perfect insects are made use of as 

 food in the City of Mexico, and in 1857 a long account was published 

 by Guerin-Meneville in five French journals almost simultaneously, 

 in which three species (of Notonecta and Corixa, two of which were 

 presumed by the author to be new) were enumerated. The most im- 

 portant paper, however, was contributed in the following year to the 

 Bull. Soc. Geol. France, pp. 187 — 205, by Virlet d'Aoust, in which he 

 summarizes the previous literature, and adds numerous details which 

 will be referred to in part later. The employment of these creatures 

 for food is not confined to the ISTew "World, for de Motschulsky men- 

 tions (Etudes Entom., v, p. 77, 1856) an Egyptian species of Corixa 

 whose ova are used for this purpose. 



During the last few weeks arrangements have been made for the 

 importation into this country both of imagines and ova in large 

 quantities, not indeed for human consumption, but for the food of 

 insectivorous birds, game, fish, &c., and it may not be uninteresting, 

 especially as the previous records are not readily available to British 

 readers, to give a short account of these insects and their economy. 



G-uerin-Meneville enumerates four species, but the three hundred 

 specimens which (through the courtesy of the importers) I have ex- 

 amined up to the present time, belong to two species only (disregarding 

 a small water-beetle and two examples of a species of Anisops, whose 

 presence is merely accidental), viz., Notonecta americana, Fabr., and 

 Corixa mercenaria, Say, the latter being very largely in the majority. 

 Guerin-Meneville's very insufficiently described N. unifasciata is 

 doubtless the former, while I am unable to identify his C. femorata by 

 the equally unsatisfactory description. The third species mentioned 

 by him is C. mercenaria, which forms the bulk of the " food ;" it is 

 readily distinguished from all other species of Corixa by the large, 

 almost immaculate, pale area at the base of the elytra. While G. 

 mercenaria appears to be confined to Mexico and one of the United 



