DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 299 



cies in many countries ; and the Cossus of Pliny, which 

 he tells us the Roman epicures fattened with flour 3 , 

 most probably belonged to this tribe. Linne indeed, 

 following the opinion of Ray b , supposes the caterpillar 

 of the great goat-moth, the anatomy of which has been 

 so wonderfully traced by the eye and pencil of the incom- 

 parable Lyonet, to be the Cossus. But there seems a 

 strong reason against this opinion ; for Linne's Cossus 

 lives most commonly in the willow, Pliny's in the oak ; 

 and the former is a very disagreeable, ugly and fetid 

 larva, not very likely to attract the Roman epicures. 

 Probably they were the larva? of Prionus coriarius, 

 which I have myself extracted from the oak, or of one 

 of its congeners . The grub of Cerambyx damicornis, 

 which is the thickness of a man's finger, is eaten at 

 Surinam, in America, and in the West Indies, both by 

 whites and blacks, who empty, wash, and roast them, 

 and find them delicious d . Mr. Hall informs me, that 



a Hist. Nat. 1. xvii. c. 24. 



b Wisdom of God, 9th ed. 307- Ray first adopted the opinion here 

 maintained, that the Cossi were the larva? of some beetle; but after- 

 wards, from observing in the caterpillar of Bombyx Cossus a power 

 of retracting its prolegs within the body, he conjectured that the 

 hexapod larva from Jamaica, {Prionus damicornis ? ) given him by 

 Sir Hans Sloane, might have the same faculty, and so be the cater- 

 pillar of a Bombyx. 



c Amoreux has collected the different opinions of entomologists 

 on the subject of Pliny's Cossus, which has been supposed the larva 

 of Calandra Palmarum by Geoffroy ; of Lucanus Cervus by Scopoli ; 

 and of Prionus damicornis by Drury. The first and last, being neither 

 natives of Italy nor inhabiting the oak, are out of the question. The 

 larvae of Lucanus Cervus and Prionus coriarius, which are found in the 

 oak as well as in other trees, may each have been eaten under this 

 name, as their difference would not be discernible either to collec- 

 tors or cooks. Amoreux, 154. d Merian Ins. Sur. 24. 



