DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 257 



letters 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 food 

 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 delicacy. 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, wings, 

 and legs,) then sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and fry 

 them, adding a little vinegar.* From this string of au- 

 thorities you will readily see how idle was the controversy 

 concerning the locusts which formed part of the sustenance 

 of J ohn the Baptist, agreeing with Hasselquist \ 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. 



In 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 (larva), he says, lives in the 



1 Hieroz. ii. 1. 4. c. 7. 492. 2 Pliny, Hist. Nat. 1. vl. c. 30. 



3 Id. ibid. 



■* Jackson's Travels in Marocco, 53. 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 excel- 

 lent. 



5 Travels, 230. 6 Horn. 11. y. 150—154. 



VOL. I. S 



