347 



CHAPTER X. 



Various Insects Eaten as Food. 



Cockchafers or Vers Blaoc Eaten — Modes of Cooking — Bees and 

 Ants Eaten — Cossus of the Ancients^ — Gru-grus or Palm- 

 worma — Caterpillars — Tobacco Worms — Locusts — Extensive 

 Use of Locusts in Africa, Asia, and America — Various Modes 

 of Cooking — Termites Eaten in India and Africa — Silkworm 

 Chrysalids — Bed Ants — Honey — Statistics of Production — 

 Lerp and Trehalose. 



Descending low in the scale of animal life we find on 

 investigation that insects furnish more food delicacies 

 than is generally supposed. 



In warm countries omnivorous man wages war in turn 

 upon the petty insect tribes as upon the larger animals 

 of creation, and converts them into food dainties. There 

 are many insects looked upon with disgust, which, in« 

 reality, are more clean, more wholesome, and feed on 

 better food than those other animals with which we 

 constantly load our tables. The old poet, Herrick, 

 seemed well acquainted with this fact, for some two 

 hundred years ago he thus described a feast given by 

 Oberon to the fairy elves : — 



" Gladding his palate with some store 

 Of emmet's eggs : what would he more ? 

 But beards of mice, a newt's stew'd thigh, 

 A bloated earwig, and a fly. 

 With the red-capp'd worm that's shut 

 Within the concave of a nut. 

 Brown as his tooth ; a little moth. 

 Late fattened in a piece of cloth." 



The common rain-worm is carefully gathered in China, 

 and raw or roasted considered most palatable food. Still 

 it . is the poor mainly that appreciate, by the side of 



