USES TO WHICH LOCUSTS MAY BE PUT. 437 



was oftea found necessary to cut down tbe grape-vines. Trees not killed 

 were often badly barked and lost many limbs, and, except where pro- 

 tected by ditches, no orchards yielded fruit." Many trees put forth a 

 few secondary blossoms after the insects left, and some even produced 

 small secondary fruit. The permanent injury becomes more noticeable 

 the succeeding year, for not only do many of the trees die outright, but 

 they are all feeble and more liable than usual to the attacks of the Flat- 

 headed borer (Chrysobothris femorata) and other injurious insects. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

 USES TO WHICH LOCUSTS MAY BE PUT. 



Locusts may be put to several uses, as tbod, fish -bait, manure, etc., 

 while, as shown by Professor Kedzie, formic acid, which is used in 

 medicine and may be used in the arts, may be extracted from them. 

 Millions of the inhabitants of Africa and Asia have for ages used locusts 

 as an article of food, and iu certain tracts of Africa the advent of swarms 

 of locusts is hailed with joy by the natives (who, it may be remarked, 

 are not fiirmers), since they afford them an abundant and nutritious 

 article of food. It is well known that the Indians of the Great Basin, 

 or region between the plains and Sierra Nevada, eat locusts and crickets, 

 baking them in holes iu which heated stones are placed, and then cov- 

 ering them with soil. 



Apropos of locusts as an article of food, we may quote as follows 

 from Mr. Packard's Half Hours with Insects : 



The Crustacea afford iu the northern lobster, tlie spiny lobster of the tropics, and 

 numerous kinds of shrimps and crabs, many choice bits for our larder. Whether, 

 however, any of the insects, or their allies the spiders, or even the vcorms, will ever 

 afford food to civilized man is a matter of grave doubt. While the bulk of our animal 

 food is given us by the vertebrated animals, the ox, sheep, fowl, and game being our 

 main dependence, the mollusks afford us the deliciDus oyster, which wo shall never be 

 able to give up ; the less aristocratic clam, handed over to the Pilgrim Fathers by the 

 sagamores and their followers ; the delicious though rare scallop and the quahaug, while 

 mussels, snails, and whelks regale our transatlantic friends. Honey is universally 

 sought, and that is an insect product, but the flesh of insects is, upon the whole, re- 

 pugnant to our feelings. This is certainly unreasonable, for multitudes of the locust 

 or grasshopper of the East are eaten by Arabs and the savages in other parts of Africa. 

 We look with repugnance upon a roasted grasshopper, but an Arab is said to have ex- 

 pressed his abhorrence at our eating raw oysters. While in their sudden flights the 

 grasshoppers cover the ground and eat up every green thing, the natives adopt the sen- 

 sible coarse of devouring them in turn. The Bushman, who is no farmer, sings — 



" Yea, even the wasting locust swarm, 

 Which mighty nations dread, 

 To me nor terror brings nor harm — 

 I make of them my bread." 



He collects them, according to Anderson, by lighting large fires directly in the path 

 of their swarms. As the insects pass over the flames, their wings are scorched and 



