One thing alone makes me hesitate: the direct consumption of the Locust. As regards indirect consumption, under the form of Partridge, young Turkey and others, none will think of denying him his praises. Is direct consumption then so unpleasant? That was not the opinion of Omar,[7] the mighty caliph, the destroyer of the library of Alexandria. His stomach was as rude as his intellect; and, by his own account, he [[365]]would have relished a basket of Grasshoppers.
Long before him, others were content to eat them, though in this case it was a wise frugality. Clad in his Camel’s-hair garment, St. John the Baptist, the bringer of good tidings and the great stirrer of the populace in the days of Herod, lived in the desert on Grasshoppers and wild honey:
“And his meat was locusts and wild honey,” says the Gospel according to St. Matthew.
Wild honey I know, if only from the pots of the Chalicodoma.[8] It is a very agreeable food. There remains the Grasshopper of the desert, otherwise the Locust. In my youth, like every small boy, I appreciated a Grasshopper’s leg, which I used to eat raw. It is not without flavour. To-day let us rise a peg higher and try the fare of Omar and St. John the Baptist.
I capture some fat Locusts and have them cooked in a very rough and ready fashion, fried with butter and salt, as the Arab author prescribes. We all of us, big and little, partake of the queer dish at dinner. [[366]]We pronounce favourably upon the caliph’s delicacy. It is far superior to the Cicadæ extolled by Aristotle. It has a certain shrimpy flavour, a taste that reminds one of grilled Crab; and, were it not that the shell is very tough for such slight edible contents, I would go to the length of saying that it is good, without, however, feeling any desire for more.
My curiosity as a naturalist has now twice allowed itself to be tempted by the dishes of antiquity: Cicadæ first; Locusts next. Neither the one nor the other roused my enthusiasm. We must leave these things to the powerful jaws of the negroes and the huge appetite of which the famous caliph gave proof.
The queasiness of our stomachs, however, in no way decreases the Locusts’ merits. Those little browsers of the burnt grass play a great part in the workshop where our food is prepared. They swarm in vast legions which roam over the barren wastes, pecking here and there, turning what could not otherwise be used into a foodstuff which is passed on to a host of consumers, including, first and foremost, the bird that often falls to man’s share. [[367]]
Pricked relentlessly by the needs of the stomach, the world knows no more imperative duty than the acquisition of food. To secure a seat in the refectory, each animal expends its sum total of activity, industry, toil, trickery and strife; and the general banquet, which should be a joy, is to many a torment. Man is far from escaping the miseries of the struggle for food. On the contrary, only too often he tastes them in all their bitterness.
Ingenious as he is, will he succeed in freeing himself from them? Science says yes. Chemistry promises, in the near future, a solution of the problem of subsistence. The sister science, physics, is preparing the way. Already it is contemplating how to get more and better work done by the sun, that great sluggard who thinks that he has done his duty by us when he sweetens our grapes and ripens our corn. It will bottle his heat, garner his rays, in order to control them and employ them where we think fit.
With these supplies of energy, the hearths will blaze, the wheels will turn, the pestles pound, the graters grate, the rollers grind; and the work of agriculture, so wasteful at present, thwarted as it is by the inclemency [[368]]of the seasons, will become factory-work, yielding economical and safe returns.