VARIOUS INSECTS EATEN AS FOOD. 359 



tion at the British Museum, must have noticed among its 

 Nineveh sculptures one in which are represented men 

 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 

 represented by the sculpture, locusts were sufficiently 

 esteemed to make part of a public feast. They are 

 in Scripture counted among the "clean meats," and 

 are frequently referred to in 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 .^Ethiopians " which fed on locusts that came in 

 swarms from the southern and unknown districts " ; 

 and Livingstone has made us familiar with the fact that 

 the custom yet prevails among many African tribes. 

 We have it from Pliny that locusts were in high esteem 

 among the Parthians, 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 to the present day. In Morocco, where, as I am 

 informed by one Mr. Trovey Blackmore, of London, who 

 has spent some time in that country, they do more oi 

 less damage every year, they are used extensively for 

 food whenever they abound, so as to diminish the ordi- 

 nary food supply, while they are habitually roasted 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 proportion of the 

 population, collect the females only for this pui-pose, 

 having an idea that the male is unclean, but that under 

 the body of the females there are some Hebrew charac- 

 ters which make them lawful food. In reality there are, 

 under the thorax, certain dark markings — the species 

 used, and which is so injurious to crops, being the 

 A.cridium perigrinum. 



KadoBzkowski, president of the Kussian Entomological 

 Society, tells us that they are also, to this day, exten- 



