174 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 
wings, and legs), then sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and fry them, 
adding a little vinegar.! From this string of authorities you will ‘readily 
see how idle was the controversy concerning the locusts which formed 
part of the sustenance of John the Baptist, agreeing with Hasselquist 2, 
that they could be nothing but the animal locust, so common a food in the 
East; and how apt even learned men are to perplex a plain question, from 
ignorance of the customs of other countries. 
Tn the hemipterous order of insects, none are more widely dispersed, or-— 
(if you will forgive me a pun) have made more.noise in the world, than the 
Cicada tribe. From the time of Homer, who compares the garrulity of age 
to the chirping of these insects *, they have been celebrated by the poets ; 
and Anacreon, as you well know, has inscribed a very beautiful little ode 
to them. We learn from Aristotle, that these insects were eaten by the 
polished Greeks, and accounted very delicious. The worm (/arva), he 
says, lives in the earth where it takes its growth: that it then becomes a 
Tettigometra (pupa), when he observes they are most delicious, just before 
the burst from their covering. From this state they change to the Z'ettix 
or Cicada, when the males at first have the best flavour ; but after impreg- 
nation the females are preferred on account of their white eggs.4 Athe- 
neus also and Aristophanes mention their being eaten; and Aélian is 
extremely angry with the men of his age, that an animal sacred to the 
Muses should be strung, sold, and greedily devoured.$ Pliny tells us that 
the nations of the East, even the Parthians, whose wealth was abundant, 
use them as food.® The imago of the Cicada septendecim, is still eaten by 
the Indians in America, who pluck off the wings and boil them?; and 
the aborigines of New South Wales, as we learn from Mr. Bennett, 
formerly used various species of the Cicadide as food, stripping off the 
wings and eating them raw. They are aware that the sounds made by 
these insects which they call galang-galang, are peculiar to the males, and 
depend upon their drums, observing to Mr. Bennett, in their peculiar 
English, “ Old woman galang-galang no got, no make a noise.” 8 
This ancient Greek taste for Cicade seems now much gone out of 
fashion ; but perhaps if it were revived in those countries where the insects 
are to be found, for they inhabit only warm climates®, it would be 
ascertained that so polished a people did not relish them without reason. 
No insects are more numerous in this island than the caterpillars of - 
Lepidoptera: if these could be used in aid of the stock of food in times of 
sae it might subserve the double purpose of ridding us of a nuisance, 
and relieving the public pressure. Reaumur suggests this mode of diminish- 
ing the numbers of destructive caterpillars, speaking of that of Plusia 
Gamma, a moth which did such infinite mischief in France in the year 
1 Jackson’s Travels in Marocco, 58. The Rev. R. Sheppard caused some of our 
large English grasshoppers (Acrida viridissima) to be cooked in the way here 
recommended, only substituting butter for vinegar, and found them excellent. 
2 Travels, 230. 3 Hom. JI. y. 150 —154. 
4 Arist. Hist. An. 1. v. ¢. 80. 
5 Vide Bochart, Hieroz. ii. 1. 4. c, 7, 491. 
6 Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 26. . 7 P. Collinson in Phil. Trans. 1768, n. x. 
Fae Wanderings in New South Wales, i. 237., quoted in Lntom. Mag. 
il. . 
® One species, however, has been found in Hampshire in the New Forest. See 
Samouelle’s Zntomologist’s Useful Compendium, t. 6. f, 2. 
