locust tribe, as they are the greatest destroyers of food, so as
some recompense they furnish a considerable supply of it to numerous
nations. They are recorded to have done this from the most remote
antiquity, some Ethiopian tribes having been named from this
circumstance _Acridophagi_ (locust-eaters)[554]. Pliny also relates
that they were in high esteem as meat amongst the Parthians[555].
Hasselquist, in reply to some inquiries which he made on this subject
with respect to the Arabs, was informed that at Mecca, when there was
a scarcity of corn, as a substitute for flour they would grind locusts
in their hand-mills, or pound them in stone mortars; that they mixed
this flour with water into a dough, and made their cakes of it, which
they baked like their other bread. He adds, that it is not unusual for
them to eat locusts when there is no famine; but then they boil them
first a good while in water, and afterwards stew them with butter into
a kind of fricassee of no bad flavour[556]. Leo Africanus, as quoted
by Bochart, gives a similar account[557]. Sparrman informs us that the
Hottentots are highly rejoiced at the arrival of the locusts in their
country, although they destroy all its verdure, eating them in such
quantities as to get visibly fatter than before, and making of their
eggs a brown or coffee-coloured soup. He also relates a curious notion
which they have with respect to the origin of the locusts--that they
proceed from the good will of a great master-conjuror a long way to the
north, who, having removed the stone from the mouth of a certain deep
pit, lets loose these animals to be food for them[558]. This is not
unlike the account given by the author of the Apocalypse, of the origin
of the symbolical locusts, which are said to ascend upon an angel's
opening the pit of the abyss[559]. Clenard, in his letters quoted by
Bochart, says that they bring waggon-loads of locusts to Fez, as a
usual article of food[560]. 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[561].
They appear even to have been an article of food offered for sale in
the markets of Greece[562]; 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 platefull 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[563].--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[564], 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[565],
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 earth where it takes its growth; that it then becomes a
_Tettigometra_ (_pupa_), when he observes they are most delicious,
just before they burst from their covering. From this state they
change to the _Tettix_ or _Cicada_, when the males at first have
the best flavour; but after impregnation the females are preferred
on account of their white eggs[566]. Athenæus also and Aristophanes
mention their being eaten; and Ælian is extremely angry with the
men of his age that an animal sacred to the Muses should be strung,
sold, and greedily devoured[567]. Pliny tells us that the nations of
the East, even the Parthians, whose wealth was abundant, use them as
food[568]. The imago of the _Cicada septemdecim_ is still eaten by
the Indians in America, who pluck off the wings and boil them[569].
This ancient Greek taste for _Cicadæ_ seems now gone out of fashion,
at least travellers do not notice it: but perhaps if it were revived
in those countries where the insects are to be found, for they
inhabit only warm climates[570], 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 scarcity, it might subserve the double purpose of ridding us
of a nuisance, and relieving the public pressure. Reaumur suggests
this mode of diminishing the numbers of destructive caterpillars,
speaking of that of _Plusia Gamma_, a moth which did such infinite
mischief in France in the year 1735[571]. 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[572]. 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[573]. 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_[574]), some of which tribe, Dr. Darwin
tells us, are, in his opinion, very delicious[575]: 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 larva coming
out only in the night to feed, has called it _Nycterobius_.
The next order, the _Neuroptera_, will make us some amends for the
meagerness of the last, as it 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[576]. König, 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 windward 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[577]. 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 calabashes, bring large kettles full of them
to their habitations, and parch them in iron pots over a gentle fire,
stirring them about as is done in roasting coffee. In that state
without sauce or other addition they serve them up as delicious food,
and eat them by handfulls as we do comfits. He has eaten them dressed
in this way several times, and thought them delicate, nourishing and
wholesome, being sweeter than the grub of the weevil of the palms,
(_Cordylia Palmarum_,) and resembling in taste sugared cream or sweet
almond paste[578]. The female ant, in particular, is supposed by the
Hindoos to be endowed with highly nutritive properties, and, we are
told by Mr. Broughton, was carefully sought after and preserved for
the use of the debilitated Surjee Rao, prime-minister of Scindia chief
of the Mahrattas[579].
The _Hymenoptera_ order also furnishes a few articles to add to
this head. I do not allude to the nectar which the bees collect for
us. But perhaps you do not suspect that bees themselves in some
places serve for food, yet Knox tells us that they are eaten in
Ceylon[580]:--an ungrateful return for their honey and wax which I
would on no account recommend. Piso speaks of yellow ants called
_Cupiá_ inhabiting Brazil, the abdomen of which many used for food,
as well as a larger species under the name of _Tama-joura_[581];
which account is confirmed by Humboldt, who informs us that ants are
eaten by the Marivatanos and Margueritares, mixed with resin for
sauce. Ants, I speak from experience, have no unpleasant flavour;
they are very agreeably acid, and the taste of the trunk and abdomen
is different; so that I am not so much surprised as Mr. Consett seems
to have been at the avidity with which the young Swede mentioned
by him sat down to the siege of an ants' nest[582]. This author
states, that in some parts of Sweden ants are distilled along with
rye, to give a flavour to the inferior kinds of brandy[583].--Under
this head may not improperly be mentioned several galls the product
of different species of gall-flies (_Cynips_), particularly those
found on some kind of Sage, viz. _Salvia pomifera_, _S. triloba_,
and _S. officinalis_, which are very juicy like apples, and crowned
with rudiments of leaves resembling the calyx of that fruit. They
are esteemed in the Levant for their aromatic and acid flavour,
especially when prepared with sugar, and form a considerable article
of commerce from Scio to Constantinople, where they are regularly
exposed in the market[584]. The galls of ground-ivy have also been
eaten in France; but Reaumur, who tasted them, is doubtful whether
they will ever rank with good fruits[585].
To the _Diptera_ order, as a source of food, man can scarcely be said
to be under any obligation; the larva of _Tyrophaga Casei_, which is
so commonly found in cheese, being the only one ever eaten--a dainty
as some think it, of whom you will perhaps say with Scopoli, "_quibus
has delicias non invideo_[586]."
The order _Aptera_, now that the Crustacea are excluded, does not
much more abound in esculent insects than the Diptera. The only
species which have tempted the appetite of man in this order are the
cheese-mite (_Acarus Siro_)--lice, which are eaten by the Hottentots
and natives of the western coast of Africa, who from their love of
this game, which they not only collect themselves from their well
stored _capital_ pasture, but employ their wives in the chase,
have been sometimes called Phthirophagi[587]. Insects of the class
_Arachnida_, which you will think still more repulsive than the
last tribe, form an article in Sparrman's list of the Boshies-man's
dainties[588]; and Labillardiere tells us that the inhabitants of
New Caledonia seek for and eat with avidity large quantities of a
spider nearly an inch long (which he calls _Aranea edulis_), and
which they roast over the fire[589]. Even individuals amongst the
more polished nations of Europe are recorded as having a similar
taste; so that, if you could rise above vulgar prejudices, you would
in all probability find them a most delicious morsel. If you require
precedents, Reaumur tells us of a young lady who when she walked in
her grounds never saw a spider that she did not take and crack upon
the spot[590]. Another female, the celebrated Anna Maria Schurman,
used to eat them like nuts, which she affirmed they much resembled
in taste, excusing her propensity by saying that she was born
under the sign Scorpio[591]. If you wish for the authority of the
learned, Lalande the celebrated French astronomer was, as Latreille
witnessed[592], equally fond of these delicacies. And lastly, if not
content with taking them seriatim you should feel desirous of eating
them by handfulls, you may shelter yourself under the authority of
the German immortalized by Rösel[593], who used to spread them upon
his bread like butter, observing that he found them very useful, "_um
sich auszulaxiren_."--These edible _Aptera_ and _Arachnida_ are all
sufficiently disgusting: but we feel our nausea quite turned into
horror when we read in Humboldt, that he has seen the Indian children
drag out of the earth centipedes eighteen inches long and more than
half an inch broad, and devour them[594].
* * * * *
After all I have said, you may perhaps still feel a prejudice against
insects as food; but I think, when you recollect that Oberon
and his queen Titania, that renowned personage Robin Goodfellow,
"with all the fairy elves that be," number insects amongst their
choicest cates, you will no longer be heretical in this article, but
yield with a good grace; and as a reward I will copy out for you a
beautiful poetical description of Oberon's feast, which was lately
pointed out to me by a learned bibliographical friend, John Crosse,
Esq. of Hull, in Herrick's _Hesperides_, 1658.
Shapcot, to thee the fairy state
I with discretion dedicate;
Because thou prizest things that are
Curious and unfamiliar.
Take first the feast: these dishes gone,
We'll see the fairy court anon.
A little mushroom table spread;
After short prayers, they set on bread,
A moon-parch'd grain of purest wheat,
With some small glitt'ring grit to eat
His choicest bits with: then in a trice
They make a feast less great than nice.
But all this while his eye is serv'd,
We must not think his ear was starv'd;
But that there was in place to stir
His spleen, the chirring grasshopper,
The merry cricket, puling fly,
The piping gnat for minstrelsy:
And now we must imagine first
The elves present, to quench his thirst,
A pure seed pearl of infant dew,
Brought and besweeten'd in a blue
And pregnant violet; which done,
His kitling eyes begin to run
Quite through the table, where he spies
The horns of papery butterflies,
Of which he eats, and tastes a little
Of what we call the cuckoo's spittle:
A little furze-ball pudding stands
By, yet not blessed by his hands,
That was too coarse: but then forthwith
He ventures boldly on the pith
Of sugar'd rush, and eats the sag
And well be-strutted bee's sweet bag;
Gladding his palate with some store
Of emmet's eggs: what would he more?
But beards of mice, a newt's stew'd thigh,
A bloated earwig and a fly;
With the red-capp'd worm that's shut
Within the concave of a nut,
Brown as his tooth: a little moth
Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth;
With wither'd cherries; mandrakes' ears;
Moles' eyes; to these the slain stag's tears;
The unctuous dewlaps of a snail;
The broke heart of a nightingale
O'ercome in music;----
----This done, commended
Grace by his priest, the feast is ended.--
Having considered insects as adding to the general stock of food, I
shall next request your attention while I detail to you how far the
medical science is indebted to them. Had I addressed you a century
ago, I could have made this an ample history. Amongst scores of
infallible panaceas, I should have recommended the woodlouse as a
solvent and aperient; powder of silkworm for vertigo and convulsions;
millepedes against the jaundice; earwigs to strengthen the nerves;
powdered scorpion for the stone and gravel; fly-water for disorders
in the eyes; and the tick for erysipelas. I should have prescribed
five gnats as an excellent purge; wasps as diuretics; lady-birds for
the colic and measles; the cockchafer for the bite of a mad dog and
the plague; and ants and their acid I should have loudly praised
as incomparable against leprosy and deafness, as strengthening
the memory, and giving vigour and animation to the whole bodily
frame[595]. In short, I could have easily added to the miserably
meager list of modern pharmacopœias, a catalogue of approved
insect-remedies for every disease and evil
"that flesh is heir to!"
But these good times are long gone by. You would, I fear, laugh at my
prescriptions notwithstanding the great authorities I could cite in
their favour; and even doubt the efficacy of a more modern specific
for tooth-ache, promulgated by a learned Italian professor[596], who
assures us that a finger once imbued with the juices of _Rhinobatus
antiodontalgicus_ (a name enough to give one the tooth-ache to
pronounce it) will retain its power of curing this disease for a
twelvemonth! I must content myself, therefore, with expatiating on
the virtues of the very few insects to which the sons of Hippocrates
and Galen now deign to have recourse. At the same time I cannot help
observing that their proscription of the remainder may have been too
indiscriminate. Mankind are apt to run from one extreme to the other.
From having ascribed too much efficacy to insect-remedies, we may
now ascribe too little. Many insects emit very powerful odours, and
some produce extraordinary effects upon the human frame; and it is an
idea not altogether to be rejected, that they may concentrate into a
smaller compass the properties and virtues of the plants upon which
they feed, and thus afford medicines more powerful in operation than
the plants themselves. It is at least worth while to institute a set
of experiments with this view.
Medicine at the present day is indebted to an ant (_Formica bispinosa_,
Oliv. _fungosa_, F.) for a kind of lint collected by that insect from
the Bombax or silk cotton-tree, which as a styptic is preferable to
the puff-ball, and at Cayenne is successfully used to stop the blood
in the most violent hæmorrhages[597]; and gum ammoniac, according to
Mr. Jackson[598], oozes out of a plant like fennel, from incisions made
in the bark by a beetle with a large horn. But with these exceptions,
(in which the remedy is rather collected than produced by insects,)
and that of spiders' webs, which are said to have been recently
administered with success in ague, the only insects which directly
supply us with medicine are some species of _Cantharis_ and _Mylabris_.
These beetles however amply make up in efficacy for their numerical
insignificance; and almost any article could be better spared from the
Materia Medica than one of the former usually known under the name
of _Cantharides_, which is not only of incalculable importance as a
vesicatory, but is now administered internally in many cases with very
good effect. In Europe, the only insect used with this view is the
_Cantharis vesicatoria_; but in America the _C. cinerea_ and _vittata_
(which are extremely common and noxious insects, while the _C.
vesicatoria_ is sold there at sixteen dollars the pound,) have been
substituted with great success, and are said to vesicate more speedily,
and with less pain, at the same time that they cause no strangury[599]:
and in China they have long employed the _Mylabris Cichorei_, which
seems to have been considered the most powerful vesicatory amongst the
ancients, who however appear to have been acquainted with the common
_Cantharis vesicatoria_ also, and to have made use of it, as well as
of _Cetonia aurata_ and some other insects mentioned by Pliny[600].
Another species of _Mylabris_ has been described by Major-general
Hardwicke in the _Asiatic Transactions_[601], plentiful in all parts of
Bengal, Bahar, and Oude, which is fully as efficacious as the common
Spanish fly.
* * * * *
But it is as supplying products valuable in the arts and manufactures,
that we are chiefly indebted to insects. In adverting to them in this
view, I shall not dwell upon the articles derived from a few species
in particular districts, and confined to these alone, such as the soap
which in some parts of Africa is manufactured from a beetle (_Chlænius
saponarius_[602]); the oil which Molina tells us is obtained in Chili
from large globular cellules found upon the wild rosemary, and supposed
to be produced by a kind of gall-fly[603]; and the manure for which
Scopoli informs us the hosts of Ephemeræ that annually emerge in the
month of June from the Laz, a river in Carniola, are employed by the
husbandmen, who think they have had a bad harvest unless every one has
collected at least twenty loads[604].
Still less is it my intention to detain you in considering the
purpose to which in the West Indies and South America the fire-flies
are put by the natives, who employ them as lanterns in their
journeys, and lamps in their houses[605];--or the use as ornaments
to which some insects are ingeniously applied by the ladies, who
in China embroider their dresses with the elytra and crust of a
brilliant species of beetle (_Buprestis vittata_); in Chili and the
Brazils form splendid necklaces of the golden _Chrysomelidæ_ and
brilliant diamond beetles, &c.[606]; in some parts of the continent
string together for the same purpose the burnished violet-coloured
thighs of _Geotrupes stercorarius_, &c.[607]; and in India, as I
am informed by Major Moor and Captain Green, even have recourse
to fire-flies, which they inclose in gauze and use as ornaments
for their hair when they take their evening walks. I shall confine
my details to the more important and general products which they
supply to the arts, beginning with one indispensable to our present
correspondence, and adverting in succession to the insects affording
_dyes_, _lac_, _wax_, _honey_, and _silk_.
No present that insects have made to the arts is equal in utility and
universal interest, comes more home to our best affections, or is
the instrument of producing more valuable fruits of human wisdom and
genius, than the product of the animal to which I have just alluded.
You will readily conjecture I mean the fly that gives birth to the
_gall-nut_, from which ink is made,--How infinitely are we indebted to
this little creature, which at once enables us to converse with our
absent friends and connexions be their distance from us ever so great,
and supplies the means by which, to use the poet's language we can
"----give to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name!"
enabling the poet, the philosopher, the politician, the moralist, and
the divine, to embody their thoughts for the amusement, instruction,
direction and reformation of mankind.--The insect which produces the
gall-nut is of the genus _Cynips_ of Linné, but was not known to him or
to Fabricius. Olivier first described it under the name of _Diplolepis
gallæ tinctoriæ_[608]. The galls originate on the leaves of a species
of oak (_Quercus infectoria_,) very common throughout Asia Minor, in
many parts of which they are collected by the poorer inhabitants and
exported from Smyrna, Aleppo, and other ports in the Levant, as well
as from the East Indies, whither a part of those collected are now
carried. The galls most esteemed are those known in commerce under the
name of _blue galls_, being the produce of the first gathering before
the fly has issued from the gall. It will not be uninteresting to you
to know, that from these when bruised may occasionally be obtained
perfect specimens of the insect, one of which I lately procured in this
way. The galls which have escaped the first searches, and from most
of which the fly has emerged, are called _white galls_, and are of a
very inferior quality, containing less of the astringent principle than
the blue galls in the proportion of two to three[609]. The white and
blue galls are usually imported mixed in about equal proportions, and
are then called galls in sorts. If no substitute equal to galls as a
constituent part of ink has been discovered, the same may be said of
these productions as one of the most important of our dyeing materials
constantly employed in dyeing black. It is true that this colour may be
communicated without galls, but not at once so cheaply and effectually,
as is found by their continued large consumption notwithstanding all
the improvements in the art of dyeing. Other dyeing drugs are afforded
by insects, the principal of which are _Chermes_, _the Scarlet Grain
of Poland_, _Cochineal_, _Lac-lake_, and _Lac-dye_, all of which are
furnished by different species of _Coccus_.
The first of these, the _Coccus Ilicis_, found abundantly upon a
small species of evergreen oak (_Quercus coccifera_) common in the
south of France, and many other parts of the world, has been employed
to impart a blood red or crimson dye to cloth from the earliest
ages, and was known to the Phœnicians before the time of Moses under
the name of _Tola_ or _Thola_ (תולע), to the Greeks under that of
_Coccus_ (Κοκκος), and to the Arabians and Persians under that of
_Kermes_ or _Alkermes_; whence, as Beckmann has shown, and from
the epithet _vermiculatum_ given to it in the middle ages, when it
was ascertained to be the produce of a worm, have sprung the Latin
_coccineus_, the French _cramoisi_ and _vermeil_, and our _crimson_
and _vermilion_. It was most probably with this substance that the
curtains of the tabernacle (Exod. xxvi. &c.) were dyed deep red
(which the word scarlet, as our translators have rendered שני תולעת,
then implied, not the colour now so called, which was not known in
James the First's reign when the Bible was translated)--it was with
this that the Grecians and Romans produced their crimson; and from
the same source were derived the imperishable reds of the Brussels
and other Flemish tapestries. In short, previous to the discovery
of cochineal, this was the material universally used for dyeing the
most brilliant red then known; and though that production of the
New World has, in some respects undeservedly[610], supplanted it in
Europe, where it is little attended to except by the peasantry of the
provinces in which it is found, it still continues to be employed in
a great part of India and Persia[611].
The scarlet grain of Poland (_Coccus polonicus_) is found on the
roots of the perennial knawel (_Scleranthus perennis_, a scarce
plant in this country, but abundant in the neighbourhood of Elvedon
in Suffolk), and was at one time collected in large quantities for
dyeing red in the Ukraine, Lithuania, &c. But though still employed
by the Turks and Armenians for dyeing wool, silk and hair, as well as
for staining the nails of women's fingers, it is now rarely used in
Europe except by the Polish peasantry. A similar neglect has attended
the Coccus found on the roots of _Poterium Sanguisorba_[612], which
was used by the Moors for dyeing silk and wool a rose colour; and
the _Coccus Uva-ursi_, which with alum affords a crimson dye[613].