DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 259 



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 butter- 

 flies proceed.^ The Chinese, who waste nothing, after they 

 have unwound the silk from the cocoons of the silkworm, 

 send the chrysalis to table : they also eat the larva of a hawk- 

 moth (^Sphinx ^),^omQ of which tribe. Dr. Darwin tells us, 

 are, in his 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 Mac- 

 Leay, Esq. has assigned characters, and, from the circum- 

 stance of its larva coming out only in the night to feed, has 

 called it Nycterobius. A species of butterfly also {^Euplcea 

 hamata, MacLeay), as we learn from Mr. Bennett, congre- 

 gates 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 un- 

 known), that the native blacks, who call them Bugong, assem- 

 ble 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 vomitings, and 

 other debilitating effects : but these go ofl* 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, 



» Ray's Letters, 135. 2 Sparrman, i. 201. 



3 Sir G. Staunton's Voy. iii. 246. Phytol 364. 



^ Bennett's Wanderings, uhi supra, i. 265 — 270. 



S 2 



