Sir G. Staunton, in his account of China, remarks: “The shops of Hai-tien, in addition to necessaries, abounded in toys and trifles, calculated to amuse the rich and idle of both sexes, even to cages containing insects, such as the noisy Cicada, and a large species of the Gryllus.”[876]
S. Wells Williams tells us that the Chinese boys often capture the male Cicada of their country, and tie a straw around the abdomen, so as to irritate the sounding apparatus, and carry it through the streets in this predicament, to the great annoyance of every one, for the stridulous sound of this insect is of deafening loudness.[877]
When in Quincy, Illinois, in the summer of 1864, I was shown by a boy a toy, which he called a “Locust,” with which he imitated the loud rattling noise of the Cicada septemdecim with great accuracy. It consisted of a horse-hair
tied to the end of a short stick, and looped in a cap of stiff writing-paper placed over the hole of a spool. To make the sound, then, the toy was whirled rapidly through the air, when the stiff paper acted as a sounding-board to the vibrating hair.
At Surinam, Madame Merian tells us, the noise of the Cicada tibicen is still supposed to resemble the sound of a harp or lyre, and hence called the Lierman—the harper.[878] Another species, in Ceylon, which makes the forest re-echo with a long-sustained noise so curiously resembling that of a cutler’s wheel, has acquired the highly appropriate name of the Knife-grinder.[879]
It is said of our Cicada septemdecim, the so-called, but very improperly, “Seventeen-year Locust,” that, when they first leave the earth, when they are plump and full of juices, they have been made use of in the manufacture of soap.
The larva of a Chinese species of Cicada, the Flata limbata, which scarcely exceeds the domestic fly in size, forms a sort of grease, which adheres to the branches of trees and hardens into wax. In autumn the natives scrape this substance, which they call Pela, from off the trees, melt, purify, and form it into cakes. It is white and glossy in appearance, and, when mixed with oil, is used to make candles, and is said to be superior to the common wax for use. The physicians employ it in several diseases; and the Chinese, as we are informed by the Abbe Grosier, when they are about to speak in public, or when any occasion is likely to occur on which it may be necessary to have assurance and resolution, eat an ounce of it to prevent swoonings or palpitations of the heart.[880]
On the large cheese-like cakes of this wax, hanging in the grocers’ and tallow-chandlers’ shops at Hankow, are often seen the inscription written: “It mocks at the frost, and rivals the snow.” The price, in 1858, was forty dollars a picul, or about fifteen pence a pound.[881]
The Greeks, notwithstanding their veneration for the Cicada, made these insects an article of food, and accounted them delicious. Aristotle says, the larva, when it is grown
in the earth, and become a tettigometra (pupa), is the sweetest; when changed to the tettix, the males at first have the best flavor, but after impregnation the females are preferred, on account of their white ova.[882] Athenæus and Aristophanes also 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.[883] The Cicada septemdecim, Mr. Collinson in 1763 said, was eaten by the Indians of America, who plucked off the wings and boiled them.[884]