The late Mr. J. C. Bidwell, a botanist, travelling in Australia, states—‘I never before tasted one of the large grubs, which are a favourite food of the blacks. They are about four inches long, and about as thick as a finger. They inhabit the wood of the gum-trees. I had often tried to taste one, but could not manage it. Now, however, hunger overcame my nausea. It was very good, but not as I had expected to find it—rich; it was only sweet and milky.’
Sir Robert Schomburgk writes:—‘The decaying woods of the West India islands, the Central and some of the southern portions of America, afford a delicacy to the Indian, which many colonists do not even refuse, in the larvæ of a large beetle, which is found in considerable numbers in the pith, when the trunk is near its decay. The larva, or grub, is frequently of the size of the little finger; and, after being boiled or roasted, resembles in its taste beef marrow. The Indians of Guiana frequently cut down the Mauritia palm, for the purpose of attracting the beetle to deposit its eggs in it, and when they collect a large quantity, they are roasted over a slow fire, to extract the fat, which is preserved in calabashes.
The Roman epicures fattened some of these larvæ, or grubs, on flour. Some naturalists think that the grubs of most of the beetles might be safely eaten; and that those of the cockchafer, which feeds upon the roots of grass, or the perfect insects themselves, which, if we may judge from the eagerness with which cats, and turkeys and other birds devour them, are no despicable morsel, might be added to our food delicacies. This would certainly be one means of keeping down the numbers of these occasionally destructive animals.
The Goliath beetles are said to be roasted and eaten by the natives of South America and Western Africa, and they often make a bonne bouche of splendid insects which would gratify many an entomologist. Although the large prices of £30, £40, or £50, which used to be asked for them, are now very much reduced, fine specimens of some of the species even now fetch five to six pounds for cabinet specimens.
The Australian aborigines are gourmands in their way, and able to appreciate the good things which surround them. Mr. Clement Hodgkinson in a work on Australia says:
‘Bellenger Billy amused me very much by his curious method of diving to the bottom of the river in search of cobberra, the large white worms resembling boiled maccaroni, which abound in immersed wood. He swam to the centre of the river with a tomahawk in his hand, and then breathing hard that his lungs might be collapsed, he rendered his body and tomahawk specifically heavier than water, and sank feet foremost to the bottom. After groping about there for some moments, he emerged on the river’s edge, with several dead pieces of wood, which he had detached from the mud. Although I had tasted from curiosity various kinds of snakes, lizards, guanas, grubs, and other animals which the blacks feed upon, I never could muster resolution enough to try one of these cobberra; although, when I have been engaged in the survey of salt-water creeks, and I felt hot and thirsty, I have often envied the extreme relish with which some accompanying black could stop and gorge himself with this moist, living marrow.’
The women of Turkey cook and eat a certain beetle (Blaps sulcata) in butter to fatten themselves.
ORTHOPTERA.
In the next order of insects, the 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 locust-eaters. The generic name of the locusts, Gryllus, sounds like an invitation to cook them. Pliny relates that they were in high esteem as meat amongst the Parthians. When there is a scarcity of grain, as a substitute for flour the Arabs grind locusts in their hand-mills, or pound them in stone mortars. They mix this flour with water into a dough, and make thin cakes of it, which they bake like other bread. They also eat them in another way; they boil them first a good while in water, and afterwards stew with oil or butter into a kind of fricassée of no bad flavour.