438 REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



they fall helplessly to the ground. They are also, he says, collected by cart-loads -when 

 they have retired to rest. The locusts, after being partially roasteu, are eaten fresh, 

 or they are dried in the hot ashes, and then stored away for future emergencies. The 

 natives reduce them also to powder, or meal, by means of two stones or a wooden mor- 

 tar, which powder, when mixed with water, produces a kind of soup or stirabout. I 

 have tasted locusts prepared in various ways, but I cannot say that I have found thtm 

 very palatable. But they must contain a vast deal of nourishment, since the poor 

 people thrive wonderfully on them. 



The writer has found by experience that grasshoppers fried in butter 

 taste DO better and no worse than shrimps. But the most conclusive 

 evidence on this point are the experiments of Mr. Kiley, which we ex- 

 tract in full from his Eighth Annual Eeport on the Insects of Missouri 



(1875) : 



Our relish or disrelish of certain animals for food are very much matters of habit or 

 fashion, for we esteem many things to-day which our forefathers considered either 

 poisonous or repulsive. There is nothing very attractive about such cold-blooded ani- 

 mals as turtles, frogs, oysters, clams, crabs, lobsters, prawns, shrimps, periwinkles, 

 snails, mussels, quahaugs, or scallops until we have become accustomed to them; and 

 what is there about a dish of locusts, well served up, more repulsive than about a lot 

 of shrimps? for the former feed on green vegetation, and are more cleanly than either 

 pigs or chickens. Who can doubt but that the French, during the late investment of 

 Paris, would have looked upon a swarm of these locusts as a manna-like blessing from 

 Heaven, and would have miacli preferred them to stewed rat? And why should the 

 people of the West, when rendered destitute and foodless by these insects, not make 

 the best of the circumstances and guard against fam.ne by utilizing them as food? 

 Haviug, m 1875, personally test-d ihem for this purpose, I will here record the result 

 very much as originally given to the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science at its meeting for that year. 



In the few words I have to communicate under this head it is not my purpose to in- 

 ilist a long dissertation on edible insects. The subject has been sufficiently treated of 

 by various authors, and esp; cially by Kirby and Spence, in their admirable introduc- 

 tion to Entomology ; while Mr. W. R. Gerard has brought together most of the facts in 

 a paper entitled "Entomophagy," read before the Poughkeeptie Society of Natural 

 History. It is my desire rather to demonstrate the availability of locusts as food ior 

 man, and their value as such whenever, as not infrequently happens, they deprive him 

 of all other sources of nourishment. 



With the exception of locusts, most other insects that have been used as food for 

 man are obtained in small quantities, and their use is more a matter of curiosity than 

 of interest. They have been employed either by exceptional individuals with perverted 

 tastes, or else as dainty tit-bits to tickle sonje abnormal and epicurean palate. Not so 

 with locusts, which have from time immemorial formed a staple article of diet with 

 many people, and are used to-day in large quantities in many parts of the globe. 



Any one at all familiar with the treasures on exhibition at the British Museum must 

 have noticed among its Nineveh sculptures one in which men are represented carrying 

 different kinds of meat to some festival, and among them some who carry long sticks 

 to which are tied locusts, thus indicating that in those early days locusts were suffi- 

 ciently esteemed to make part of a public feast. They are counted amotig the " clean 

 meats" in Leviticus (xi,22), and are referred to in other parts of the Bible as food for 

 man. In most parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa subject to locust ravages these insects 

 have been and are yet extensively used as food. Herodotus mentions a tribe of Ethi- 

 opians " which fed on locusts which came in swarms from the southern and unknown 

 districts,'^ and Livingstone has made us familiar with the fact that the locust-feeding 

 custom prevails among many African tribes. Indeed, some tribes have been called 

 Acridophagi, from the almost exclusive preference they give to this diet. We have it 



