360 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



sively used as food in Southern Kussia ; while many of 

 the 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. 



Let us, then, briefly consider the nature of this locust 

 food ajid the different methods of preparing it. The 

 records show us that in ancient times these insects were 

 cooked in a variety of ways. CEdipoda migratoria and 

 Acridium perigrinum, which are the more common devas- 

 tating 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 either boiled, 

 roasted, stewed, fried, or broiled. The Eomans 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 herring.s. 



Chanier, in his account of the Empire of Morocco 

 (London, 1T88), 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 in the manner described by Jackson in his 

 " Travels in Morocco," viz., by first boiling and then 

 frying them. But the Jews in that country— more pro- 

 vident than the Moors — salt them and keep them for 

 using with the dish called Dafina, which forms the Satur- 

 day's dinner of the Jewish population. The dish is 

 made by placing meat, fish, eggs, tomatoes — in fact, 

 almost anything edible — in a jar which is put 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 fire on that day. In the Abb^ Godard's 

 " Description et Histoire de Maroc" (Paris, 1860), he 

 tells us that " they are placed in bags, salted, and either 

 baked or boiled. They are then dried on the ten-aced 

 roofs of the houses. Fried in oil they are not bad." 



