USES TO WHK.'H LOCUSTS MAY BE PUT. 439 



from Plioy that locusts were iu high esteem among the Partbians, and the records of 

 their use in ancient times, as food, in Southern Europe and Asia are abundant. This 

 use continues in those parts of the world until the present day. 



In Morocco (as I am informed by Mr. Trovey Blackmore, of London, who has spent 

 some time in that country) they do more or less damage every year, and are used ex- 

 tensively for food whenever they so abound as to diminish the ordinary food-supply ; 

 while they are habituallyroasted for eating and brought into Tangier and other towns 

 by the country-people and sold in the market-places and on the streets. The Jews, 

 who form a large jjortiou of the population, collect the females only for this purpose, 

 having an idea that the male is unclean, but that under the body of the female there 

 are some Hebrew characters which make them lawful food. In reality there are, un- 

 der the thorax, certain dark markings, the 8i)ecies used being the AcricUum perigrinuni, 

 which is so injurious to crops. Radoszkowski, president of the Russian Entomological 

 Society, tells me that they are also to this day extensively used as food in Southern 

 Russia, while many of our North American Indian tribes, and notably the Snake and 

 Digger Indians of California, are known to feed upon them. No further evidence need 

 be cited to prove the present extensive use of these insects as articles of food. L t us 

 then briefly consider the nature of this locust food, and the different methods of pre- 

 paring it. 



The records show us that iu ancient times these insects were cooked in a variety of 

 ways. (Edipoda migratoria and Acridium perigrinum, which are the more common 

 devastating locusts of the Old World, are both of large size, and they are generally 

 prepared by first detaching the legs and wings. The bodies are then boiled, roasted, 

 stewed, fried, or broiled. The Romans are said to have used them by carefully roasting 

 them to a bright golden yellow. At the present day, in most parts of Africa, and 

 especially in Russia, they are either salted or smoked like red herrings. Chevier, in 

 his account cf the Empire of Morocco (London, 1788), says that thus cured they are 

 brought into the market in prodigious quantities, but that they have " an oily and 

 rancid taste, which habit only can render agreeable." The Moors use them, to the 

 present day, iu the manner described by Jackson in his " Travels iu Morocco," viz, by 

 first boiling and then frying them; but the Jews in that country, more provident 

 than the I^Ioors, salt them and keep them for using with the dish called dafina, which 

 forms the Saturday's dinner of the Jewish population. The dish is made by placing 

 meat, lish, eggs, tomatoes, in fact almost anything edible, in a jar, which is placed in 

 the oven on Friday night, and taken out hot on the Sabbath, so that the people get 

 a hot meal without the sin of lighting a fir^ on that day. Iu the Ahh6 Godard's 

 '^ Description et Histob'e de ilfaroc" (Paris, 1860), he tells us that "they are x)laced in 

 bags, salted, and either baked or boiled. They are then dried on the terraced roofs of 

 the houses. Fried in oil, they are not bad." Some of our Indians collect locusts by 

 lighting fires in the direct path of the devouring swarms. In roasting, the wings and 

 legs crisp up and are separated; the bodies are then eaten fresh, or dried iu hot ashes 

 and put away for future use. Our Digger Indians roast them and grind or pound them 

 to a kind of flour, which they mix with pounded acorns, or with berries, make into 

 cakes, and dry in the sun for future use. 



The species employed by the ancients were doubtless the same as those employed at 

 the present day in the East, viz, the two already mentioned, and, to a less degree, the 

 smaller Caloptenus italicus. We have no records of any extended use of our own Rocky 

 Mountain species (Caloptenus spretus), unless — which is not improbable — the species 

 employed by the Indians on the Pacific coast should prove to be the same, or a geo- 

 graphical race of the same. 



It had long been a desire with me to test the value of this species (sjjretiis) as food, 

 and I did not lose the opportunity to gratify that desire which the recent 1 cust inva- 

 sions into some of the Mississippi Valley States afforded. I knew well enough that the 

 attempt would provoke to ridicule and mirth, or even disgust, the vast majority of our 

 people, unaccustomed to anything of the sort, and associating with the word insect or 



