DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 175 
1735.1 If, however, we were to take to eating caterpillars, I should for 
my own part be of the mind of the red-breasts, and eat only the naked ones.? 
But you will see that there is some encouragement from precedent to make 
a meal of the caterpillars which infest our cabbages and cauliflowers. 
Amongst the delicacies of a Boshies-man’s table, Sparrman reckons those 
caterpillars from which butterflies proceed.* The Chinese, who waste 
nothing, after they have unwound the silk from the cocoons of the silk- 
worm, send the chrysalis to table: they also eat the larva of a hawk-moth 
(Sphinw*), some of which tribe, Dr. Darwin tells us, are, inhis opinion, very 
delicious®: and lastly, the natives of New Holland eat the caterpillars of a 
species of moth of a singular new genus, to which my friend, Alexander 
MacLeay, Esq. has assigned characters, and from the circumstance of its 
Jarva coming out only in the night to feed, has called it Mycterobius. A 
species of butterfly also (Luplea hamata MacLeay), as we learn from 
Mr. Bennett, congregates on the insulated granitic rocks in a particular 
district, which he visited in the months of November, December, and 
January, in such countless myriads (with what object is unknown), that 
the native blacks, who call them Bugong, assemble from far and near to 
collect them, and, after removing the wings and down by stirring them on 
the ground previously heated by a large fire, and winnowing them, eat the 
bodies, or store them up for use by pounding and smoking them. The 
bodies of these butterflies abound in an oil with the taste of nuts ; and 
when first eaten, produce violent yomitings, and other debilitating effects 
but these go off after a few days, and the natives then thrive and fatten 
exceedingly on this diet, for which they have to contend with a black 
crow, which is also attracted by the Bugongs in great numbers, and which 
they despatch with their clubs, and use as food.® 
The next order, the Neuroptera, contains the white ant tribe (Termes), 
which, in return for the mischief it does at certain times, affords an 
abundant supply of food to some of the African nations. The Hottentots 
eat them boiled and raw, and soon get into good condition upon this food.? 
KG6nig, quoted by Smeathman, says that in some parts of the East Indies 
the natives make two holes in the nests of the white ants, one to the wind- 
ward and the other to the leeward, placing at the latter opening a pot 
rubbed with an aromatic herb, to receive the insects driven out of their 
nest by a fire of stinking materials made at the former.® Thus they catch great 
quantities, of which they make with flour a variety of pastry, that they can 
afford to sell cheap to the poorer people, Mr, Smeathman says he has not 
found the Africans so ingenious in procuring or dressing them, They are 
content with a very small part of those that fall into the waters at the 
time of swarming, which they skim off with calabaches, bring large kettles 
full of them to their habitations, and parch them in iron pots over a gentle 
fire, sticring them about as is done in roasting coffee. In that state, 
without sauce or other addition, they serve them up as delicious food, and 
1 Reaum. ii, 841, 2 Ray’s Letters, 135. 5 Sparrman, i. 201. 
4 Sir G. Staunton’s Voy. iii. 246. 5 Phytol. 864. 
® Bennett’s Wanderings, ubi supra, i. 265 — 270. 
7 Sparrman, i. 368, 
Captain Green relates that, in the ceded districts in India, they place the 
branches of trees over the nests, and then by means of smoke drive out the 
Insects; which, attempting to fly, their wings are broken off by the mere touch 
of the branches, 
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