124 
HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packard. 
experience: he says “that ants have no unpleasant flavor; 
they are very agreeably acid, and the taste of the trunk and 
abdomen is different.” He refers to the fact that “in some 
parts of Sweden ants are distilled along with rye to give a 
flavor to the inferior kinds of brandy.” Certain galls are 
esteemed in Constantinople for their aromatic and acid taste, 
and Reaumur says that the galls of the ground ivy have 
been eaten in France, but he thinks it doubtful if they ever 
rank with good fruits (Kirby). 
Reaumur has suggested that the numbers of injurious 
caterpillars might be judiciously lessened by our using them 
as food. Kirby and Spence in their admirable “Introduc¬ 
tion to Entomology” give a list of the lepidopterous larvae 
« eaten by man. 
“Amongst the delicacies of a Boshies-man’s table, Sparr- 
man reckons those caterpillars from which butterflies pro¬ 
ceed. 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) some of which tribe, Dr. Darwin tells us, 
are, in his opinion, very delicious; and lastl}’, 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 larva coming out only in the night to feed, has called it 
Nycterobius. A species of butterfly also (Eublcea 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 re¬ 
moving 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 
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