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;——