LETTER X.

_BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS._

DIRECT BENEFITS.

My last letter was devoted to the indirect advantages which we derive from insects; in the present I shall enumerate those of a more _direct_ nature for which we are indebted to them, beginning with their use as the _food_ of man, in which respect they are of more importance than you may have conceived.

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One class of animals which, till very lately, have been regarded as belonging to the entomological world, I mean the _Crustacea_, consisting principally of the genus _Cancer_ of Linné, are universally reckoned amongst our greatest dainties; and they who would turn with disgust from a locust or the grub of a beetle, feel no symptoms of nausea when a lobster, crab, or shrimp is set before them. The fact is, that habit has reconciled us to the eating of these last, which, viewed in themselves with their threatening claws and many feet, are really more disgusting than the former. Had the habit been reversed, we should have viewed the former with appetite and the latter with abhorrence, as do the Arabs, "who are as much astonished at our eating crabs, lobsters, and oysters, as we are at their eating locusts[541]." That this would have been the case is clear, at least as far as regards the former position, from the practice in other parts of the world, both in ancient and modern times, to which, begging you to lay aside your English prejudices, I shall now call your attention; first observing by the way, that the insects used as food, generally speaking, live on vegetable substances, and are consequently much more select and cleanly in their diet than the swine or the duck, which form a favourite part of ours.

Many larvæ[542] that belong to the order _Coleoptera_ are eaten in different parts of the world. The grub of the palm-weevil (_Cordylia_[543] _Palmarum_), which is the size of the thumb, has been long in request in both the Indies. Ælian speaks of an Indian king, who, for a dessert, instead of fruit set before his Grecian guests a roasted worm taken from a plant, probably the larva of this insect, which he says the Indians esteem very delicious--a character that was confirmed by some of the Greeks who tasted it[544]. Madam Merian has figured one of these larvæ, and says that the natives of Surinam roast and eat them as something very exquisite[545]. A friend of mine, who has resided a good deal in the West Indies, where the palm-grub is called _Grugru_, informs me that the late Sir John La Forey, who was somewhat of an epicure, was extremely fond of it when properly cooked.

The larvæ also of the larger species of the capricorn tribe (_Cerambyx_, L. _Longicornes_, Latr.) are accounted very great delicacies in many countries; and the Cossus of Pliny, which he tells us the Roman epicures fattened with flour[546], most probably belonged to this tribe. Linné indeed, following the opinion of Ray[547], supposes the caterpillar of the great goat-moth, the anatomy of which has been so wonderfully traced by the eye and pencil of the incomparable Lyonet, to be the Cossus. But there seems a strong reason against this opinion; for Linné's Cossus lives most commonly in the willow, Pliny's in the oak; and the former is a very disagreeable, ugly and fetid larva, not very likely to attract the Roman epicures. Probably they were the larvæ of _Prionus coriarius_, which I have myself extracted from the oak, or of one of its congeners[548]. The grub of _P. damicornis_, which is of the thickness of a man's finger, is eaten at Surinam, in America, and in the West Indies, both by whites and blacks, who empty, wash, and roast them, and find them delicious[549]. Mr. Hall informs me, that in Jamaica this grub is called _Macauco_, and is in request at the principal tables. A similar insect is dressed at Mauritius under the name of _Moutac_, which the whites as well as Negroes eat greedily[550]. The larva of _P. cervicornis_ is, according to Linné, held in equal estimation, and that of _Acanthocinus Tribulus_ when roasted forms an article of food in Africa[551]. It is probable that all the species of this genus might be safely eaten, as well as many other grubs of _Coleoptera_; and although I do not feel disposed to recommend with Reaumur[552], that the larvæ of _Oryctes nasicornis_ should be sought for "_dans les couches de fumier_," yet I think with Dr. Darwin[553], that those of the cockchafer which feed 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 _bonne bouche_, might be added to our _entremets_. This would be one means of keeping down the numbers of these occasionally destructive animals.

In the next order of insects, the _Orthoptera_, the gryllus, or 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].

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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.

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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].

Cochineal, the _Coccus Cacti_, is doubtless the most valuable product for which the dyer is indebted to insects, and with the exception perhaps of indigo the most important of dyeing materials. Though the Spaniards found it employed by the natives of Mexico, where alone it is cultivated, on their arrival in that country in 1518, its true nature was not accurately ascertained for nearly two centuries afterwards. Acosta indeed as early as 1530, and Herrara and Hernandez subsequently, had stated it to be an insect. But led apparently by its external appearance, notwithstanding the conjectures of Lister and assertions of Pere Plumier to the contrary, it was believed by Europeans in general to be the seed of a plant, until Hartsoeker in 1694, Leeuwenhoek and De la Hire in 1704, and Geoffroy, ten years later, by dissections and microscopical observations incontrovertibly proved its real origin[614].

This insect, which comes to us in the form of a reddish shrivelled grain covered with a white powder or bloom, feeds on a particular kind of Indian fig, called in Mexico, where alone cochineal is produced in any quantity, Nopal, which has always been supposed to be the _Cactus cochinilifer_, but according to Humboldt is unquestionably a distinct species, which bears fruit internally white.

Cochineal is chiefly cultivated in the Intendency of Oaxaca; and some plantations contain 50 or 60,000 nopals in lines, each being kept about four feet high for more easy access in collecting the dye. The cultivators prefer the most prickly varieties of the plant, as affording protection to the cochineal from insects; to prevent which from depositing their eggs in the flower or fruit, both are carefully cut off. The greatest quantity, however, of cochineal employed in commerce, is produced in small nopaleries belonging to Indians of extreme poverty, called _Nopaleros_. They plant their nopaleries in cleared ground on the slopes of mountains or ravines two or three leagues distant from their villages; and when properly cleaned, the plants are in a condition to maintain the cochineal in the third year. As a stock, the proprietor in April or May purchases branches or joints of the _Tuna de Castilla_, laden with small cochineal insects recently hatched (_Semilla_). These branches, which may be bought in the market of Oaxaca for about three francs (2_s._ 6_d._) the hundred, are kept for twenty days in the interior of their huts, and then exposed to the open air under a shed, where from their succulency they continue to live for several months. In August and September the mother cochineal insects, now big with young, are placed in nests made of a species of _Tillandsia_ called _Paxtle_, which are distributed upon the nopals. In about four months the first gathering, yielding twelve for one, may be made, which in the course of the year is succeeded by two more profitable harvests. This period of sowing and harvest refers chiefly to the districts of Sola and Zimatlan. In colder climates the semilla is not placed upon the nopals until October or even December, when it is necessary to shelter the young insects by covering the nopals with rush mats, and the harvests are proportionably later and unproductive. In the immediate vicinity of the town of Oaxaca the Nopaleros feed their cochineal insects in the plains from October to April, and at the beginning of the remaining months, during which it rains in the plains, transport them to their plantations of nopals in the neighbouring mountains, where the weather is more favourable.

Much care is necessary in the tedious operation of gathering the cochineal from the nopals, which is performed with a squirrel or stag's tail by the Indian women, who for this purpose squat down for hours together beside one plant; and notwithstanding the high price of the cochineal, it is to be doubted if the cultivation would be profitable were the value of labour more considerable.

The cochineal insects are killed either by throwing them into boiling water; by exposing them in heaps to the sun; or by placing them in the ovens (_Temazealli_) used for vapour baths. The last of these methods, which is least in use, preserves the whitish powder on the body of the cochineal, which being thus less subject to the adulterations so often practised by the Indians, bears a higher price both in America and Europe[615].

The quantity at present annually exported from South America is said by Humboldt to be 32,000 arrobas, there worth 500,040_l._ sterling[616]--a vast amount to arise from so small an insect, and well calculated to show us the absurdity of despising any animals on account of their minuteness. So important is the acquisition of this insect (of which the Spanish government is extremely jealous) regarded, that the Court of Directors of the East India Company have offered a reward of 6000_l._ to any one who shall introduce it into India, where hitherto the Company have only succeeded in procuring from Brazil the wild kind producing the _sylvestre_ cochineal, which is of very inferior value.

_Lac_, is the produce of an insect formerly supposed to be a kind of ant or bee[617], but now ascertained to be a species of _Coccus_, whose history will be adverted to when I come to speak of the secretions of insects; and it is collected from various trees in India, where it is found so abundantly, that, were the consumption ten times greater than it is, it could be readily supplied. This substance is made use of in that country in the manufacture of beads, rings, and other female ornaments. Mixed with sand it forms grind-stones; and added to lamp- or ivory-black, being first dissolved in water with the addition of a little borax, it composes an ink not easily acted upon when dry by damp or water. In this country, where it is distinguished by the names _stick-lac_ when in its native state unseparated from the twigs to which it adheres; _seed-lac_ when separated, pounded, and the greater part of the colouring matter extracted by water; _lump-lac_ when melted and made into cakes; and _shell-lac_ when strained and formed into transparent laminæ;--it has hitherto been chiefly employed in the composition of varnishes, japanned ware, and sealing-wax: but within these few years it has been applied to a still more important purpose, originally suggested by Dr. Roxburgh--that of a substitute for cochineal in dyeing scarlet. The first preparations from it with this view were made in consequence of a hint from Dr. Bancroft, and large quantities of a substance termed _lac-lake_, consisting of the colouring matter of stick-lac precipitated from an alkaline lixivium by alum, were manufactured at Calcutta and sent to this country, where at first the consumption was so considerable, that in the three years previous to 1810 Dr. Bancroft states that the sales of it at the India House equalled in point of colouring matter half a million of pounds weight of cochineal. More recently, however, a new preparation of lac colour, under the name of _lac-dye_, has been imported from India, which has been substituted for the lac-lake, and with such advantage, that the East India Company are said to have saved in a few months 14,000_l._ in the purchase of scarlet cloths dyed with this colour and cochineal conjointly, and without any inferiority in the colour obtained[618].

Some other insects besides the Cocci afford dyes. Reaumur tells us, that in the Levant, Persia, and China, they use the galls of a particular species of _Aphis_ for dyeing silk crimson, which he thinks might lead us to try experiments with those of our own country[619]. That dyes might be thus obtained seems probable from an observation of Linné's, in his Lapland Tour, upon the galls produced by _Aphis Pini_ on the extremities of the leaves of the spruce-fir, which, he informs us, when arrived at maturity burst asunder, and discharge an orange-coloured powder which stains the clothes[620]; and Mr. Sheppard confirms this observation, the galls of this Aphis abounding upon fir-trees in his garden. In fact, we are told that _Terminalia citrina_, a tree common in India, yields a species of gall, the product of an insect, which is sold in every market, being one of the most useful dyeing drugs known to the natives, who dye their best and most durable yellow with it[621]. A species of mite (_Trombidium tinctorium_), a native of Guinea and Surinam, is also employed as a dye; and it would be worth while to try whether our _T. holosericeum_, so remarkable for the dazzling brilliancy of its crimson and the beautiful velvet texture of its down, which seems nearly related to _T. tinctorium_, would not also afford a valuable tincture. It is not likely, perhaps, that many better and cheaper dyes than we now possess can be obtained from insects; but Reaumur has suggested that water-colours of beautiful tints, not otherwise easily obtainable, might be procured from the excrements of the larvæ of the common clothes-moth, which retain the colour of the wool they have eaten unimpaired in its lustre, and mix very well with water. To get a fine red, yellow, blue, green, or any other colour or shade of colour, we should merely have to feed our larvæ with cloth of that tint[622].

_Wax_, so valuable for many minor purposes, and deemed with us so indispensable to the comfort of the great, is of still more importance in those parts of Europe and America in which it forms a considerable branch of trade and manufacture, as an article of extensive use in the religious ceremonies of the inhabitants. Humboldt informs us, that not fewer than 25,000 arrobas, value upwards of 83,000_l._, are annually exported from Cuba to New Spain, where the quantity consumed in the festivals of the Church is immense even in the smallest villages; and that the total export of the same island in 1803 was not less than 42,670 arrobas, worth upwards of 130,000_l._[623] Nearly the whole of the wax employed in Europe, and by far the greater part of that consumed in America, is the produce of the common hive-bee; but in the latter quarter of the globe a quantity by no means trifling is obtained from various wild species. According to Don F. de Azara, the inhabitants of Santiago del Estero gather every year not less than 14,000 pounds of a whitish wax from the trees of Chaco[624].

In China wax is also produced by another insect, which from the description of it by the Abbé Grosier seems to be a species of _Coccus_. With this insect the Chinese stock the two kinds of tree (_Kan-la-chu_ and _Choni-la-chu_) on which alone it is found, and which always afterwards retain it. Towards the beginning of winter small tumours are perceived, which increase until as big as a walnut. These are the nests (abdomens of the females) filled with the eggs that are to give birth to the _Cocci_, which when hatched disperse themselves over the leaves, and perforate the bark under which they retire. The wax (called _Pe-la_, white wax, because so by nature,) begins to appear about the middle of June. At first a few filaments like fine soft wool are perceived, rising from the bark round the body of the insect, and these increase more and more until the gathering, which takes place before the first hoar frosts in September. The wax is carried to court, and reserved for the emperor, the princes, and chief mandarins. If an ounce of it be added to a pound of oil, it forms a wax little inferior to that made by bees. The physicians employ it in several diseases; and the Chinese, when about to speak in public and assurance is necessary, previously eat an ounce of it to prevent swoonings[625]; a use of it for which happily our less diffident orators have no call. This account is in the main confirmed by Geomelli Careri, except that he calls the wax-insect a _worm_ which bores to the pith of certain trees; and says that it produces a sufficient supply for the whole empire, the different provinces of which are furnished from Xantung, where it is bred in the greatest perfection, with a stock of eggs[626]. A very different origin, however, is assigned to the _Pe-la_ by Sir George Staunton, who informs us that it is produced by a species of Cicada (_Flata limbata_), which in its larva state feeds upon a plant like the privet, strewing upon the stem a powder, which when collected forms the wax[627]. But as he merely states that this powder was "_supposed_" to form it, and does not himself appear to have made the experiment of dissolving it in oil, it is most probable that his information was incorrect, and that Grosier's statement is the true one.

This probability is nearly converted into certainty by the fact that many Aphides and Cocci secrete a wax-like substance, and that a kind of wax very analogous to the _Pe-la_, and of the same class with bees-wax, only containing more carbon, is actually produced in India by a nondescript species of Coccus remarkable for providing itself with a small quantity of honey like our bees. This substance, for specimens of which I am indebted to the kindness of Sir Joseph Banks, was first noticed by Dr. Anderson, and called by him _white-lac_. It could be obtained in any quantity from the neighbourhood of Madras, and at a much cheaper rate than bees-wax: but the experiments of Dr. Pearson do not afford much ground for supposing that it can be advantageously employed in making candles[628]. De Azara speaks of a firm white wax apparently similar, and the produce of an insect of the same tribe, which is collected in South America in the form of pearl-like globules from the small branches of the _Quabirâmý_, a small shrub two or three feet high[629].

Insects in some countries not only furnish the natives with wax but with _resin_, which is used instead of tar for their ships. Molina informs us that, at Coquimbo in Chili, resin, either the product of an insect or the consequence of an insect's biting off the buds of a particular species of Origanum, is collected in large quantities. The insect in question is a small smooth red caterpillar about half an inch long, which changes into a yellowish moth with black stripes upon the wings (_Phal. ceraria_, Molina). Early in the spring vast numbers of these caterpillars collect on the branches of the _Chila_, where they form their cells of a kind of soft white wax or resin, in which they undergo their transformations. This wax, which is at first very white, but by degrees becomes yellow and finally brown, is collected in autumn by the inhabitants, who boil it in water, and make it up into little cakes for market[630].

_Honey_, another well-known product of insects, has lost much of its importance since the discovery of sugar; yet at the present day, whether considered as a delicious article of food, or the base of a wholesome vinous beverage of home manufacture, it is of no mean value even in this country; and in many inland parts of Europe, where its saccharine substitute is much dearer than with us, few articles of rural economy, not of primary importance, would be dispensed with more reluctantly. In the Ukraine some of the peasants have 4 or 500 bee-hives, and make more profit of their bees than of corn[631]; and in Spain the number of bee-hives is said to be incredible; a single parish priest was known to possess 5000[632].

The domesticated or hive-bee, to which we are indebted for this article, is the same according to Latreille in every part of Europe, except in some districts of Italy, where a different species (_Apis ligustica_ of Spinola) is kept--the same probably that is cultivated in the Morea and the isles of the Archipelago[633]. Honey is obtained, however, from many other species both wild and domestic. What is called rock honey in some parts of America, which is as clear as water and very thin, is the produce of wild bees, which suspend their clusters of thirty or forty waxen cells, resembling a bunch of grapes, to a rock[634]: and in South America large quantities are collected from the nests built in trees by _Trigona Amalthea_, and other species of this genus recently separated from Apis[635]; under which probably should be included the _Bamburos_, whose honey, honest Robert Knox informs us, whole towns in Ceylon go into the woods to gather[636]. According to Azara, one of the chief articles of food of the Indians who live in the woods of Paraguay is wild honey[637]. Captain Green observes that, in the island of Bourbon, where he was stationed for some time, there is a bee which produces a kind of honey much esteemed there. It is quite of a green colour, of the consistency of oil, and to the usual sweetness of honey superadds a certain fragrance. It is called green honey, and is exported to India, where it bears a high price[638]. One of the species that has probably been attended to ages before our hive-bee, is _Apis fasciata_ of Latreille, a kind so extensively cultivated in Egypt, that Niebuhr states he fell in upon the Nile, between Cairo and Damietta, with a convoy of 4000 hives, which were transporting from a region where the season for flowers had passed, to one where the spring was later[639]. Columella says that the Greeks in like manner sent their bee-hives every year from Achaia into Attica; and a similar custom is not unknown in Italy, and even in this country in the neighbourhood of heaths. In Madagascar, according to Latreille, the inhabitants have domesticated _Apis unicolor_; _A. indica_ is cultivated in India at Pondicherry and in Bengal; _A. Adansonii_, Latr. at Senegal[640]; and Fabricius thinks that _A. acraensis_ (_Centris_, Syst. Piez.) _laboriosa_, and others in the East and West Indies, might be domesticated with greater advantage than even _A. mellifica_[641].

The last, and doubtless the most valuable, product of insects to which I have to advert is _Silk_. To estimate justly the importance of this article, it is not sufficient to view it as an appendage of luxury unrivalled for richness, lustre, and beauty; and without which courts would lose half their splendour. We must consider it, what it actually is, as the staple article of cultivation in many large provinces in the South of Europe, amongst the inhabitants of which the prospect of a deficient crop causes as great alarm as a scanty harvest of grain with us; and after giving employment to tens of thousands in its first production and transportation, as furnishing subsistence to hundreds of thousands more in its final manufacture; and thus becoming one of the most important wheels that give circulation to national wealth.

But we must not confine our view to Europe. When silk was so scarce in this country, that James the First, while king of Scotland, was forced to beg of the Earl of Mar the loan of a pair of silk stockings to appear in before the English ambassador, enforcing his request with the cogent appeal, "For ye would not, sure, that your king should appear as a scrub before strangers--" Nay, long before this period, even prior to the time that silk was valued at its weight of gold at Rome, and the Emperor Aurelian refused his empress a robe of silk because of its dearness--the Chinese peasantry in some of the provinces, millions in number, were clothed with this material; and for some thousand years to the present time, it has been both there and in India, (where a class whose occupation was to attend silk-worms appears to have existed from time immemorial, being mentioned in the oldest Sanscrit books[642],) one of the chief objects of cultivation and manufacture. You will admit, therefore, that when nature

"--set to work millions of spinning worms, That in their green shops weave the smooth-hair'd silk To deck her sons[643],"

she was conferring upon them a benefit scarcely inferior to that consequent upon the gift of wool to the fleecy race, or a fibrous rind to the flax or hemp plants; and that mankind is not under much less obligation to Pamphila, who, according to Aristotle, was the discoverer of the art of unwinding and weaving silk, than to the inventors of the spinning of those products[644].

It seems to have been in Asia that silk was first manufactured; and it was from thence that the ancients obtained it, calling it, from the name of the country whence it was supposed to be brought, Sericum. Of its origin they were in a great measure ignorant, some supposing it to be the entrails of a spider-like insect with eight legs, which was fed for four years upon a kind of paste, and then with the leaves of the green willow, until it burst with fat[645]; others, that it was the produce of a worm which built clay nests and collected wax[646]; Aristotle, with more truth, that it was unwound from the _pupa_ of a large horned caterpillar[647]. Nor was the mode of producing and manufacturing this precious material known to Europe until long after the Christian æra, being first learnt about the year 550 by two monks, who procured in India the eggs of the silk-worm moth, with which, concealing them in hollow canes, they hastened to Constantinople, where they speedily multiplied, and were subsequently introduced into Italy, of which country silk was long a peculiar and staple commodity. It was not cultivated in France until the time of Henry the Fourth, who, considering that mulberries grew in his kingdom as well as in Italy, resolved, in opposition to the opinion of Sully, to attempt introducing it, and fully succeeded.

The whole of the silk produced in Europe, and the greater proportion of that manufactured in China, is obtained from the common silk-worm; but in India considerable quantities are procured from the cocoons of the larvæ of other moths. Of these the most important species known are the Tusseh and Arindy silk-worms, of which an interesting history is given by Dr. Roxburgh in the _Linnean Transactions_[648]. These insects are both natives of Bengal. The first (_Attacus Paphia_,) feeds upon the leaves of the _Jugube tree_ (_Rhamnus Jujuba_) or _Byer_ of the Hindoos, and of the _Terminalia alata glabra_, Roxburgh, the _Asseen_ of the Hindoos, and is found in such abundance as from time immemorial to have afforded a constant supply of a very durable, coarse, dark-coloured silk, which is woven into a cloth called _Tusseh-doot'hies_, much worn by the Brahmins and other sects; and would doubtless be highly useful to the inhabitants of many parts of America and of the South of Europe, where a light and cool, and at the same time cheap and durable dress, such as this silk furnishes, is much wanted. The durability of this silk is indeed astonishing. After constant use for nine or ten years it does not show any signs of decay. These insects are thought by the natives of so much consequence, that they guard them by day to preserve them from crows and other birds, and by night from the bats.--The Arindy silk-worm (_Attacus? Cynthia_, Drury), which feeds solely on the leaves of the _Palma Christi_, produces remarkably soft cocoons, the silk of which is so delicate and flossy, that it is impracticable to wind it off: it is therefore spun like cotton; and the thread thus manufactured is woven into a coarse kind of white cloth of a loose texture, but of still more incredible durability than the last, the life of one person being seldom sufficient to wear out a garment made of it. It is used not only for clothing, but for packing fine cloths, &c. Some manufacturers in England to whom the silk was shown, seemed to think that it could be made here into shawls equal to any received from India.

Other species, as may be inferred from an extract of a letter given in Young's _Annals of Agriculture_[649], are known in China, and have been recently introduced into India. "We have obtained," says the writer, "a monthly silk-worm from China, which I have reared with my own hands, and in twenty-five days have had the cocoons in my basins, and by the twenty-ninth or thirty-first day a new progeny feeding in my trays. This makes it a mine to whoever would undertake the cultivation of it."

Whether it will ever be expedient to attempt the breeding of the larvæ of any European moths, as _Catocala pacta_, _Sponsa_, &c. proposed with this view by Fabricius[650], seems doubtful, though certainly many of them afford a very strong silk, and might be readily propagated; and I have now in my possession some thread more like cotton than silk spun by the larva of a moth, which when I was a very young entomologist I observed (if my memory does not deceive me) upon the Euonymus, and from the twigs of which (not the cocoon) I unwound it. It is even asserted that in Germany a manufacture of silk from the cocoons of the emperor moth (_Saturnia Pyri?_) has been established[651]. There seems no question, however, that silk might be advantageously derived from many native silk-worms in America. An account is given in the _Philosophical Transactions_ of one found there, whose cocoon is not only heavier and more productive of silk than that of the common kind, but is so much stronger that twenty threads will carry an ounce more[652]. Don Luis Neé observed on _Psidium pomiferum_ and _pyriferum_ ovate nests of caterpillars eight inches long, of gray silk, which the inhabitants of Chilpancingo, Tixtala, &c. in America, manufacture into stockings and handkerchiefs[653]. Great numbers of similar nests of a dense tissue, resembling Chinese paper, of a brilliant whiteness, and formed of distinct and separable layers, the interior being the thinnest and extraordinarily transparent, were observed by Humboldt in the provinces of Mechoacan and the mountains of Santarosa at a height of 10,500 feet above the level of the sea, upon the _Arbutus Madrôno_ and other trees. The silk of these nests, which are the work of the social caterpillars of a Bombyx (_B. Madrôno_), was an object of commerce even in the time of Montezuma, and the ancient Mexicans pasted together the interior layers, which may be written upon without preparation, to form a white glossy pasteboard. Handkerchiefs are still manufactured of it in the Intendency of Oaxaca[654]. De Azara states that in Paraguay a spider, which is found to near the thirtieth degree of latitude, forms a spherical cocoon (for its eggs) an inch in diameter, of a yellow silk, which the inhabitants spin on account of the permanency of the colour[655]. And according to M. B. de Lozieres, large quantities of a very beautiful silk, of dazzling whiteness, may be collected from the cocoons even of the Ichneumons that destroy the larvæ of some moth in the West Indies which feed upon the indigo and cassada[656].

It is probable, too, that other articles besides silk might be obtained from the larvæ which usually produce it, particularly cements and varnishes of different kinds, some hard, others elastic, from their gum and silk reservoirs, from which it is said the Chinese procure a fine varnish, and fabricate what is called by anglers Indian grass[657]. The diminutive size of the animal will be thought no objection, when we recollect that the very small quantity of purple dye afforded by the _Purpura_ of the ancients did not prevent them from collecting it.

* * * * *

I now conclude this long series of letters on the injuries caused by insects to man, and the benefits which he derives from them; and I think you will readily admit that I have sufficiently made good my position, that the study of agents which perform such important functions in the economy of nature must be worthy of attention. Our subsequent correspondence will be devoted to the most interesting traits in their history,--as their affection to their young, their food and modes of procuring it, habitations, societies, &c.

I am, &c.

FOOTNOTES:

[541] Walpole in Clarke's _Travels_, ii. 187. Even Mr. Boyle speaks with abhorrence of eating raw oysters. Walton's _Angler_, Life, p. 12.

[542] Baron Humboldt asks (_Person. Narr._ VI. i. 8. note)--"What are those worms (_Loul_ in Arabic) which Captain Lyon, the fellow traveller of my brave and unfortunate friend Mr. Ritchie, found in the pools of the desert of Fezzan, which served the Arabs for food, and which have the taste of _Caviare_? Are they not insects' eggs resembling the _Aguautle_, which I saw sold in the markets of Mexico, and which are collected on the surface of the lakes of Texcuco?" For this latter fact he refers to the _Gazeta de Litteratura de Mexico_. 1794. iii. No. 26. p. 201. It appears from this note of the illustrious traveller that insects are used as food in their _egg_ as well as their other states.

[543] Herbst and Schönherr call this distinct genus _Rhyncophorus_; but as this is too near the name of the tribe (_Rhyncophora_), we have adopted Thunberg's name, altering the termination to distinguish it from _Cordyle_ a genus of Lizards.

[544] Ælian. _Hist._ l. xiv. c. 13. quoted in Reaum. ii. 343.

[545] _Ins. Sur._ 48.

[546] _Hist. Nat._ l. xvii. c. 24.

[547] _Wisdom of God_, 9th ed. 307. Ray first adopted the opinion here maintained, that the Cossi were the larvæ of some beetle; but afterwards, from observing in the caterpillar of _Cossus ligniperda_ a power of retracting its prolegs within the body, he conjectured that the hexapod larva from Jamaica, (_Prionus damicornis?_) given him by Sir Hans Sloane, might have the same faculty, and so be the caterpillar of a Bombyx.

[548] Amoreux has collected the different opinions of entomologists on the subject of Pliny's Cossus, which has been supposed the larva of _Cordylia Palmarum_ by Geoffroy; of _Lucanus Cervus_ by Scopoli; and of _Prionus damicornis_ by Drury. The first and last, being neither natives of Italy nor inhabiting the oak, are out of the question. The larvæ of _Lucanus Cervus_ and _Prionus coriarius_, which are found in the oak as well as in other trees, may each have been eaten under this name, as their difference would not be discernible either to collectors or cooks. Amoreux, 154.

[549] Merian _Ins. Sur._ 24.

[550] St. Pierre, _Voy._ 72.

[551] Smeathman, 32.

[552] Reaum. ii. 344.

[553] _Phytol._ 364.

[554] Diod. Sic. l. iii. c. 29. Strabonis _Geog._ l. xvi. &c.

[555] _Hist. Nat._ l. xi. c. 29.

[556] _Travels_, 232.

[557] _Hieroz._ ii. l. 14. c. 7.

[558] Sparrman, i. 367.

[559] _Rev._ ix. 2, 3.

[560] _Hieroz._ ii. l. 4. c. 7. 492.

[561] Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ l. vi. c. 30.

[562] Id. ibid.

[563] Jackson's _Travels in Marocco_, 53. The Rev. R. Sheppard caused some of our large English grasshopper (_Acrida viridissima_) to be cooked in the way here recommended, only substituting butter for vinegar, and found them excellent.

[564] _Travels_, 230.

[565] Hom. _Il._ γ. 150-4.

[566] Arist. _Hist. An._ l. v. c. 30.

[567] Vide Bochart, _Hieroz._ ii. l. 4. c. 7. 491.

[568] _Hist. Nat._ l. xi. c. 26.

[569] P. Collinson in _Phil. Trans._ 1763. n. x.

[570] One species however has been found in Hampshire in the New Forest. See Samouelle's _Entomologist's Useful Compendium_, _t._ v. _f._ 2.

[571] Reaum. ii. 341.

[572] Ray's _Letters_, 135.

[573] Sparrman, i. 201.

[574] Sir G. Staunton's _Voy._ iii. 246.

[575] _Phytol._ 364.

[576] Sparrman, i. 363.

[577] Captain Green relates that, in the ceded districts in India, they place the branches of trees over the nests, and then by means of smoke drive out the insects; which attempting to fly, their wings are broken off by the mere touch of the branches.

[578] Smeathman, 31.

[579] _Letters written in a Mahratta Camp in_ 1809.

[580] Knox's _Ceylon_, 25.

[581] Piso, _Ind._ l. v. c. 13. 291.

[582] _Travels in Sweden_, 118.

[583] _Ibid._

[584] Smith's _Introd. to Bot._ 346. Olivier's _Travels_, i. 139.

[585] Reaum. iii. 416.

[586] Scop. _Carniol._ 337. See above, p. 229. note^b.

[587] Lat. _Hist. Nat._ viii. 93.

[588] Sparrman, i. 201.

[589] _Voyage à la recherche de la Perouse_, ii. 240.

[590] Reaum. ii. 342.

[591] Shaw, _Nat. Misc._

[592] _Hist. Nat._ vii. 227.

[593] Rösel, iv. 257.

[594] _Personal Travels_, ii. 205.

[595] For this list of remedies, see Lesser, _L._ ii. 171-3.

[596] Gerbi. The same virtues have been ascribed to _Coccinella septempunctata_, L.

[597] Latr. _Hist. Nat. des Fourmis_, 48. 134.

[598] Jackson's _Marocco_, 83. Some doubt however attaches to this statement, from the circumstance of the figure which Mr. Jackson gives of his beetle (_Dibben Fashook_) being clearly a mere copy of that of Mr. Bruce's _Zimb_!

[599] Illiger _Mag._ i. 256.

[600] _Hist. Nat._ l. xix. c. 4.

[601] Vol. v. 213.

[602] _Carabus_, Oliv. _Entom._ iii. 69. _t._ iii. _f._ 26. Compare _Philanthropist_, ii. 210.

[603] Molina's _Chili_, i. 174.

[604] _Ent. Carniol._ 264.

[605] Captain Green was accustomed to put a fire-fly under the glass of his watch, when he had occasion to rise very early for a march, which enabled him, without difficulty, to distinguish the hour.

[606] Molina, i. 171, 285.

[607] Latr. _Hist. Nat._ x. 143.

[608] _Encyclop. Insect._ vi. 281. It had better, perhaps, as compound Trivial Names are bad, be called _Cynips Scriptorum_.

[609] Olivier's _Travels in Egypt_, &c. ii. 64.

[610] The colour communicated by Kermes with alum, the only mordant formerly employed, is blood red: but Dr. Bancroft found (i. 404.) that with the solution of tin used with cochineal it is capable of imparting a scarlet quite as brilliant as that dye, and perhaps more permanent. At the same time, however, as ten or twelve pounds contain only as much colouring matter as one of cochineal, the latter at its ordinary price is the cheapest.

[611] Bochart, _Hierozoic._ ii. l. iv. c. 27. Beckmann's _History of Inventions_, Engl. Trans. ii. 171-205. Brancroft _on permanent Colours_. i. 393. See also Parkhurst's _Heb. Lexicon_ under תלע and שנה.

[612] Rai. _Hist. Plant._ i. 401.

[613] Bancroft, i. 401.

[614] Bancroft, i. 413. Reaum. iv. 88.

[615] Humboldt's _Political Essay on New Spain_, iii. 72-9.

[616] Ibid. iii. 64.--Dr. Bancroft estimates the present annual consumption of cochineal in Great Britain at about 750 bags, or 150,000 lbs.--worth at the present price 375,000_l._

[617] Lesser, _L._ ii. 165.

[618] Bancroft _on permanent Colours_, ii. 20. 49.

[619] Reaum. iii. _Preface_, xxxi.

[620] _Lach. Lapp._ i. 258.

[621] _Trans. of the Soc. of Arts_, xxiii. 411.

[622] Reaum. iii. 95.

[623] _Political Essay_, iii. 62.

[624] _Voyage dans l'Amer. Merid._ i. 162.

[625] Grosier's _China_, i. 439.

[626] Quoted in Southey's _Thalaba_, ii. 166.

[627] _Embassy to China_, i. 400.

[628] _Phil. Trans._ 1794. xxi.

[629] _Voyage dans l'Amer. Merid._ i. 164.

[630] Molina's _Chili_, i. 174.

[631] _Communications to the Board of Agricult._ vii. 286.

[632] Mills _on Bees_, 77.

[633] Latr. in Humboldt and Bonpland, _Recueil d'Observ. de Zoologie_, &c. (Paris, 1805) 300.

[634] Hill in _Swammerdam_, i. 181, note.

[635] Latr. _ubi supr._ 300.

[636] Knox's _Ceylon_, 25.

[637] _Voy. dans l'Amer. Merid._ i. 162.

[638] M. Latreille appears to have described this bee under the name of _Apis unicolor_. _Mém. sur les Abeilles_, 8. 39.

[639] Latr. _Hist. Nat._ xiv. 20.

[640] Latr. in Humboldt and Bonpland, _Recueil_, &c. 302.

[641] _Vorlesungen_, 324. I have read somewhere, but neglecting to make a memorandum I cannot refer to the author, (Latreille?) that a species of wasp in South America collects and stores up _honey_.

[642] Colebrook in _Asiatic Researches_, v. 61.

[643] Milton's _Comus_.

[644] _Hist. Animal._ l. v. c. 19. A French gentleman, M. Vaucanson, has invented a mill for unwinding the cocoons of the silkworm. Scott's _Visit to Paris_, 4th ed. 304.

[645] Pausanias, quoted by Goldsmith, vi. 80.

[646] Pliny _Hist. Nat._ l. xi. c. 22.

[647] Aristot. _ubi supr._ He does not expressly say the _pupa_, but this we must suppose. The _larva_ he means could not be the common silk-worm, since he describes it as large, and having as it were horns.

[648] vii. 33-48. Compare Lord Valentia's _Travels_, i. 78.

[649] xxiii. 235.

[650] _Vorlesungen_, 325.

[651] Latr. _Hist. Nat._ xiv. 150. Three modern species of _Saturnia_ were formerly considered as varieties only, and distinguished by the trivial name of _Pavonia major_, _media_, and _minor_; these are now called _S. Pyri_, _Spini_, and _Carpini_. Ochsenh.

[652] Pullein in _Phil. Trans._ 1759. 54.

[653] _Annals of Botany_, ii. 104.

[654] _Political Essay on N. Spain_, iii. 59.

[655] _Voyage dans l'Amer. Merid._ i. 212. It may here be observed as a benefit derived by the higher walks of philosophy from insects--that astronomers employ the strongest thread of spiders, the one namely that supports the web, for the divisions of the micrometer. By its ductility this thread acquires about a fifth of its ordinary length. _Nouv. Dict. d'Hist. Nat._ ii. 280.

[656] _American Phil. Trans._ v. 325.

[657] Anderson's _Recreations in Agriculture_, &c. iv. 399.