372 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



people. When this sort of food is used too abun- 

 dantly it produces cholera, which kills in two or three 

 hours. 



It also seems that in some form or other these insects 

 are greedily eaten in other countries. Thus, when after 

 swarming, shoals of them fall into the rivers, the Africans 

 skim them ofiF the surface with calabashes and bringing 

 them to their habitations parch them in iron pots over a 

 gentle fire, stirring them about as is usually done in 

 roasting coffee ; in that state without sauce or any other 

 addition they consider them delicious food, putting them 

 by handfuls into their mouths, as we do comfits. " 1 

 have," says Smeathman, " eaten them dressed in this 

 way several times, and think them delicate, nourishing, 

 and wholesome ; they are somewhat sweeter, though not 

 so fat and cloying, as the caterpillar or maggot of the 

 palm tree snout beetle (Curculio palmarum), which is 

 served up at all the luxuriant tables of the West Indian 

 epicures, particularly of the French, as the greatest 

 dainty of the Western world." * 



The large saubas (red ants) and white ants are an 

 occasional luxury to the Indians of the Rio Negro ; and 

 when nothing else is to be had in the wet season, they 

 eat large earth-worms, which, when the lands in which 

 they live are flooded, ascend trees, and take up their 

 abode in the hollow leaves of a species of Tillandsia, 

 where they are often found accumulated by thousands. 

 Nor is it only hunger that makes them eat these worms, 

 for they sometimes boil them with their fish to give it 

 an extra relish, -f 



To sum up we may remark that all nations do not par- 

 ticipate with us in the neglect of insects as food. It is 

 not only savage nations we find indulging in these gastro- 

 nomic dainties, but the more civilised races ; those which 

 have indeed been the cradle of refined civilisation have 

 not scrupled to indulge in various insects as food. 



* " Natural History of Insects." 



t Wallace's " Travels on the Rio Negro.'' 



