DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 173 
bouche, might be added to our entremets. This would be one means of 
keeping down the numbers of these occasionally destructive animals. The 
Mexican Indians, according to M. Vasselet and Madame Sallé and her 
son, who have transmitted such numbers of fine insects from Mexico to 
M. Chevrolat of Paris, prepare a liquor from a beetle (Cicindela curvata) 
by macerating it in water or spirit, which they apparently use as a stimu- 
lating beverage." 
In the next order of insects, the Orthoptera, the Gryllus, or locust tribe, 
as they are the greatest destroyers of food, so as some recompense they 
furnish a considerable supply of it to numerous nations. They are re- 
corded to have done this from the most remote antiquity, some Ethiopian 
tribes having been named from this circumstance Acridophagi(locust-eaters ).? 
Pliny also relates that they were in high esteem as meat amongst the Par- 
thians.? Hasselquist, in reply tosome inquiries which he made on this 
subject with respect to the Arabs, was informed that at Mecca, when there 
was a scarcity of corn, as a substitute for flour they would grind locusts in 
their hand-mills, or pound them in stone mortars ; that they mixed this 
flour with water into a dough, and make their cakes of it, which they 
baked like their other bread. He adds, that it is not unusual for them to 
eat locusts when there is no famine ; but then they boil them first a good 
while in water, and afterwards stew them with butter into a kind of fri- 
eassee of no bad flavour.t Leo Africanus, as quoted by Bochart, gives 
a similar account.’ Sparrman informs us that the Hottentots are highly 
rejoiced at the arrival of the locusts in their country, although they 
destroy all its verdure, eating them in such quantities as to get visibly 
fatter than before, and making of their eggs a brown or coffve-coloured 
soup. He also relates a curious notion which they have with respect to 
the origin of the locusts—that they proceed from the good-will of a great 
master-conjuror a long way to the north, who having removed the stone 
from the mouth of a certain deep pit, lets loose these animals to be food 
for them. This is not unlike the account given by the author of the 
Apocalypse, of the origin of the symbolical locusts, which are said to 
ascend upon an angel’s opening the pit of the abyss.’ Clenard, in his let- 
ters quoted by Bochart, says that they bring waggon-loads of locusts to 
Fez, as a usual article of food. Major Moor informs me, that when the 
cloud of locusts noticed in a former letter visited the Mahratta country, 
the common people salted and ate them. This was anciently the custom 
with many of the African nations, some of whom also smoked them.® They 
appear even to have been an article of focd offered for sale in the markets 
of Greece; and on a subject so well known, to quote no other writers, 
Jackson observes that, when he was in Barbary in 1799, dishes of locusts 
were generally served up at the principal tables and esteemed a great deli- 
cacy. They are preferred by the Moors to pigeons; and a person may 
eat a plateful of two or three hundred without feeling any ill effects. They 
usually boil them in water half an hour (having thrown away the head, 
1 Silbermann, Révue Lntom. i, 238. 
2 Diod. Sic. 1. iii. ¢, 29. Strabonis Geog. 1, xvi. &e. 
5 Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 29. 4 Travels, 232. 5 Hieroz. ii, 1. 14. ¢. 7. 
6 Sparrman, i. 867. 7 Rev, ix. 2, 8. 
ieroz. ii, 1, 4, c. 7. 492. 9 Pliny, Hist. Nat. 1. vi. c. 80. 
10 Td. ibid. 
