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LETTER X. 
BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 
DIRECT BENEFITS. 
My last letter was devoted to the indirect advantages which we derive 
from insects ; in the present I shall enumerate those of a more direct nature 
for which we are indebted to them, beginning with their use as the food of) 
man, in which respect they are of more importance than you may haye \ 
conceived, J 
One class of animals, which, till very lately, have been regarded as be- 
longing to the entomological world, 1 mean the Crustacea, consisting prin- 
cipally of the genus Cancer of Linné, are universally reckoned amongst our 
greatest dainties ; and they who would turn with disgust from a locust or 
the grub of a beetle, feel no symptoms of nausea when a lobster, crab, or 
shrimp is set before them. The fact is, that habit has reconciled us to the 
eating of these last, which, viewed in themselves, with their threatening 
claws and many feet, are really more disgusting than the former. Had the 
habit been reversed, we should have viewed the former with appetite and 
the latter with abhorrence, as do the Arabs, “ who are as much astonished 
at our eating crabs, lobsters, and oysters, as we are at their eating locusts.”* 
That this would have been the case is clear, at least as far as regards 
the former position, from the practice in other parts of the world, both in 
ancient and modern times, to which, begging you to lay aside your English 
prejudices, I shall now call your attention ; first observing by the way, that 
the insects used as food, generally speaking, live on vegetable substances, 
and are consequently much more select and cleanly in their diet than the 
swine or the duck, which form a favourite part of ours.* 
Many larvee* that belong to the order Coleoptera are eaten in different 
parts of the world. The grub of the palm-weevil (Cordylia* palmarum), 
1 Walpole in Clarke’s Travels, ii. 187. Even Mr. Boyle speaks with abhorrence 
of eating raw oysters, — Walton’s Angler, Life, p. 12. 
2 See a long and interesting paper by the Rev. F.W. Hope upon edible insects 
in the Trans. Ent. Soc. (vol. ili. part 2.). 
5 Baron Humboldt asks (Person. Narr. VI. i. 8. note)—“ What. are those worms 
(Low in Arabic) which Captain Lyon, the fellow-traveller of my brave and unfor- 
tunate friend Mr, Ritchie, found in the pools of the desert of Fezzan, which served 
the Arabs for food, and which have the taste of caviare? Are they not insects’ eggs 
resembling the Aguautle, which I saw sold in the markets of Mexico, and which are 
collected on the surface of the lakes of Texcuco?” Tor this latter fact he refers to 
the Gazeta de Litteratura de Mewico, 1794, iii, No. 26, p. 201. It appears from this 
note of the illustrious traveller, that insects are used as food in their egg as well as 
their other states, 
4 Herbst and Schénherr call this distinct genus Rhyncophorus; but as this is too 
near the name of the tribe (Ayncophora), we have adopted Thunberg’s name 
altering the termination, to distinguish it from Cordyle, a genus of Lizards. 
