Part 8
In the Island of Sumatra, Capt. Stuart tells me, a black Cricket is looked upon with great respect, amounting almost to adoration. It is deemed a grievous sin to kill it.
Baskets full of Field-crickets, Lopes de Gomara says, were found among the provisions of the Indians of Jamaica when they were first discovered.[297]
“The Criquet called Gryllus,” says Pliny in the words of Holland, “doth mitigat catarrhs and all asperities offending the throat, if the same bee rubbed therewith: also if a man doe but touch the amygdals or almonds of the throat, with the hand wherewith he hath bruised or crushed the said Criquet, it will appease the inflamation thereof.”[298] Again, “The Cricket digged up and applied to the plase, earth and all where it lay, is very good for the ears. Nigridius,” continues Pliny, “attributeth many properties to this poore creature, and esteemeth it not a little: but the Magicians much more by a faire deale: and why so? Forsooth because it goeth, as it were, reculing backward, it pierceth and boreth a hole into the ground, and never ceaseth all night long to creake very shrill.
“The manner of hunting and catching them is this, They take a flie and tie it above the middest at the end of a long haire of one’s head, and so put the said flie into the mouth of the Cricquet’s hole; but first they blow the dust away with their mouth, for fear lest the flie should hide herself therein; the Cricket spies the sillie flie, seaseth upon her presently and claspeth her round, and so they are both drawne foorth together by the said haire.”[299]
At the present time, children in France practice the same method of capturing Crickets for amusement; substituting, however, an ant for the “sillie flie,” and a long straw for “the haire of one’s head.” Hence comes the common proverb in France, _il est sot comme un grillon_. A ruse for capturing the larva of the Cicindela, now commonly practiced by entomologists, is founded on the same principle.
Pliny further says: “The Cricquets above rehearsed, either reduced into a liniment, or else bound too, whole as they be, cureth the accident of the lap of the eare, wounds, contusions, bruises,” etc.[300]
Dr. James, quoting Schroder and Dale, says: “The ashes of the Cricket (_Gryllus domesticus_) exhibited, are said to be diuretic; the expressed juice, dropped into the eyes, is a remedy for weakness of the sight, and alleviates disorders of the tonsils, if rubbed on them.”[301]
The English name _Cricket_, the French _Cri-cri_, the Dutch _Krekel_, and the Welsh _Cricell_ and _Cricella_, are evidently derived from the _creak_-ing sounds of these insects.
Gryllidæ--Grasshoppers.
Mr. Hughes, after describing an ash-colored Grasshopper (which may be his ash-colored cricket before mentioned),[302] remarks that the superstitious of the inhabitants of Barbados are very apprehensive of some approaching illness to the family, whenever this insect flies into their houses in the evening or in the night.[303]
Athenæus tells us the ancient Greeks used to eat the common Grasshopper and the Monkey-grasshopper as provocatives of the appetite. Aristophanes says:
How can you, in God’s name, like Grasshoppers, Catching them with a reed, and Cercopes?[304]
Turpin tells us there is a kind of brown Grasshopper in Siam, which the natives consider a delicate food.[305]
“Fernandus Oniedus declareth furthermore,” says Peter Martyr in his History of the West Indies, “that in a certain region called Zenu, lying fourescore and tenne miles from Darrina Eastwarde, they exercise a strange kinde of marchaundize: For in the houses of the inhabitantes they found great chests and baskets, made of twigges and leaves of certaine trees apt for that purpose, being all ful of Grasshoppers, Grilles, Crabbes, Crefishes, Snails also, and Locustes, which destroie the fields of corne, all well dried and salted. Being demanded why they reserved such a multitude of these beastes: they answered, that they kept them to be sowlde (sold) to the borderors, which dwell further within the lande, and that for the exchange of these pretious birdes, and salted fishes, they received of them certayne straunge thinges, wherein partly they take pleasure, and partly use them for the necessarie affaires.”[306]
In the account of the voyages of J. Huighen Linschoten, it is stated that the inhabitants of Cumana eat “horse-leeches, bats, Grasshoppers, spiders, bees, and raw, sodden, and roasted lice. They spare no living creature whatsoever, but they eat it.”[307]
“Among the choice delicacies with which the California Digger Indians regale themselves during the summer season,” says the Empire County Argus, “is the Grasshopper roast. Having been an eye-witness to the preparation and discussion of one of their feasts of Grasshoppers, we can describe it truthfully. There are districts in California, as well as portions of the plains between Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, that literally swarm with Grasshoppers, and in such astonishing numbers that a man cannot put his foot to the ground, while walking there, without crushing great numbers. To the Indian they are a delicacy, and are caught and cooked in the following manner: A piece of ground is sought where they most abound, in the center of which an excavation is made, large and deep enough to prevent the insect from hopping out when once in. The entire party of Diggers, old and young, male and female, then surround as much of the adjoining grounds as they can, and each with a green bough in hand, whipping and thrashing on every side, gradually approach the center, driving the insects before them in countless multitudes, till at last all, or nearly all, are secured in the pit. In the mean time smaller excavations are made, answering the purpose of ovens, in which fires are kindled and kept up till the surrounding earth, for a short distance, becomes sufficiently heated, together with a flat stone, large enough to cover the oven. The Grasshoppers are now taken in coarse bags, and, after being thoroughly soaked in salt water for a few moments, are emptied into the oven and closed in. Ten or fifteen minutes suffice to roast them, when they are taken out and eaten without further preparation, and with much apparent relish, or, as is sometimes the case, reduced to powder and made into soup. And having from curiosity tasted, not of the soup, but of the roast, really, if one could divest himself of the idea of eating an insect as we do an oyster or shrimp, without other preparation than simple roasting, they would not be considered very bad eating, even by more refined epicures than the Digger Indians.”[308]
An item dated Tuesday, Aug. 21st, 1742, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, states: “Great damage has been done to the pastures in the country, particularly about Bristol, by swarms of Grasshoppers; the like has happened in Pennsylvania to a surprising degree.”[309]
A common species in Sweden, the _Decticus verrucivorus_, is employed by the native peasants to bite the warts on their hands; the black fluid which it emits from its mouth being supposed to possess the power of making these excrescences vanish.[310] This black fluid, from whatever Grasshoppers it may be emitted, is called by our boys “tobacco spit,” which it much resembles; and they attribute to it also a wart-curing quality. When they catch one, they hold it between the thumb and fore-finger, and cry out,--
Spit, spit tobacco spit, And then I’ll let you go.
The exuviæ of a Grasshopper called _Semmi_ or _Sebi_, Kempfer tells us, are preserved for medicinal uses, and sold publicly in shops both in Japan and China.[311]
Dr. James, quoting Dioscorides, says: “Grasshoppers (_Locusta Anglica minor, vulgatissima_, Raii _Ins._ 60.) in a suffumigation relieve under a dysury, especially such as is incident to the female sex. The Locusta Africanus is a very good antidote against the poison of the Scorpion.”[312]
After describing the Grasshopper of Italy, Brookes says: “It is often an amusement among the children of that country to catch this animal; and, by tickling the belly with their finger, it will whistle as long as they chuse to make it.”[313]
In France, Grasshoppers are called _Sauterelles_, Hoppers; and in Germany, _Heupferde_, Hay-horses, because they generally feed on grasses, and their head has something of the form of a horse’s head.
If Grasshoppers appear early in the summer in great numbers, they foretell famine and drouth,--a superstition obtaining in Maryland.
Locustidæ--Locusts.
Moufet says: “That Locusts should be generated of the carkasse of a mule or asse (as Plutarch reports in the life of Cleonides) by putrefaction, I cannot with philosophers determine; first, because it was permitted to the Jewes to feed on them; secondly, because no man ever yet was an eye-witness of such a putrid and ignoble generation of Locusts.”[314]
The first record of the ravages of the Locusts, which we find in history, is the account in the Book of Exodus of the visitation to the land of Egypt. “And the Locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt--very grievous were they.... For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left; and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.”[315]
It is to the Bible, too, we go to find the best account, for correctness and sublimity, of the appearance and ravages of these terrific insects. It is thus given by the prophet Joel: “A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations. A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth; the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. Like the noise of chariots[316] on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array. Before their faces the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war, and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks; neither shall one thrust another, they shall walk every one in his path; and when they fall upon the sword they shall not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them, the heavens shall tremble; the sun[317] and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.” The usual way in which they are destroyed is also noticed by the prophet. “I will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face towards the east sea, and his hinder part towards the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, because he hath done great things.”[318]
Paulus Orosius tells us that in the year of the world 3800, during the consulship of M. Plautius Hypsæus, and M. Fulvius Flaccus, such infinite myriads of Locusts were blown from the coast of Africa into the sea and drowned, that being cast upon the shore in immense heaps they emitted a stench greater than could have been produced by the carcasses of one hundred thousand men. A general pestilence of all living creatures followed. And so great was this plague in Numidia, where Micipsa was king, that eighty thousand persons died; and on the sea-coast, near Carthage and Utica, about two hundred thousand were reported to have perished. Thirty thousand soldiers, appointed as the garrison of Africa, and stationed in Utica, were among the number. So violent was the destruction that the bodies of more than fifteen hundred of these soldiers, from one gate of the city, were carried and buried in the same day.[319]
St. Augustine also mentions a plague to have arisen in Africa from the same cause, which destroyed no less than eight hundred thousand persons (_octigenta hominum millia_) in the kingdom of Masanissa alone, and many more in the territories bordering upon the sea.[320]
Blown from that quarter of the globe, Locusts have occasionally visited both Italy and Spain. The former country was severely ravaged by myriads of these desolating intruders, in the year 591. These were of a larger size than common, as we are informed by Mouffet, who quotes an ancient historian; and from their stench, when cast into the sea, arose a pestilence which carried off near a million of men and cattle.[321]
In A.D. 677, Syria and Mesopotamia were overrun by Locusts.[322]
“About the year of our Lord 872,” we read in Wanley’s Wonders, “came into France such an innumerable company of Locusts, that the number of them darkened the very light of the sun; they were of extraordinary bigness, had a sixfold order of wings, six feet, and two teeth, the hardness whereof surpassed that of stone. These eat up every green thing in all the fields of France. At last, by the force of the winds, they were carried into the sea (the Baltic) and there drowned; after which, by the agitation of the waves, the dead bodies of them were cast upon the shores, and from the stench of them (together with the famine they had made with their former devouring) there arose so great a plague, that it is verily thought every third person in France died of it.”[323] These Locusts devoured in France, on an average every day, one hundred and forty acres; and their daily marches, or distances of flight, were computed at twenty miles.[324]
In 1271, all the cornfields of Milan were destroyed; and in the year 1339, all those of Lombardy.[325] We read in Bateman’s Doome, that in 1476, “grasshoppers and the great rising of the river Isula did spoyle al Poland.” A famine took place in the Venetian territory in 1478, occasioned by these terrific scourges, in which thirty thousand persons are reported to have perished. Mouffet mentions many other instances of their devastations in Europe,--in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany.[326]
A passage of Locusts in France, in 1613, entirely cut up, even to the very roots, more than fifteen thousand acres of corn in the neighborhood of Arles, and had even penetrated into the barns and granaries, when, as it were by Providence, many hundreds of birds, especially starlings, came to diminish their numbers. Notwithstanding this, nothing could be more astonishing than their multiplication, for the fecundity of the Locust is very remarkable. Upon an order issued by government, for the collection of their eggs, more than three thousand measures were collected, from each of which, it was calculated, would have issued nearly two millions of young ones.[327] In 1650, they entered Russia, in immense divisions, in three different places; thence passed over into Poland and Lithuania, where the air was darkened by their numbers. In many parts they lay dead to the depth of four feet. Sometimes they covered the surface of the earth like a dark cloud, loaded the trees, and the destruction which they produced exceeded all calculation.[328] In 1645, immense swarms visited the islands of Formosa and Tayowan, and caused such a famine that eight thousand persons died of hunger.[329]
“In 1649,” says Sir Hans Sloane, “the Locusts destroyed all the products of the island of Teneriffe. They came from the coast of Barbary, the wind being a Levant thence. They flew as far as they could, then one alighted in the sea, and another on it, so that one after another they made a heap as big as the greatest ship above water, and were esteemed almost as many under. Those above water, next day, after the sun’s refreshing them, took flight again, and came in clouds to the island, whence the inhabitants had perceived them in the air, and had gathered all the soldiers of the island and of Laguna together, being 7 or 8000 men, who laying aside their arms, some took bags, some spades, and having notice by their scouts from the hills when they alighted, they went straight thither, made trenches, and brought their bags full, and covered them with mould.... After two months fruitless management of them in this manner, the ecclesiastics took them in hand by penances, etc. But all would not do: the Locusts staid their four months; cattle eat them and died, and so did several men, and others stuck out in botches. The other Canary islands were so troubled, also, that they were forced to bury their provisions. They were troubled forty years before with the like calamity.”[330]
Barbot, after mentioning a famine that happened in North Guinea in 1681, which destroyed many thousands of the inhabitants of the Continent, and forced many to sell themselves for slaves, to only get sustenance, says these fearful famines are also some years occasioned by the dreadful swarms of Locusts, which come from the eastward and spread over the whole country in such prodigious multitudes, that they darken the very air, passing over head like mighty clouds. They leave nothing that is green wheresoever they come, either on the ground or trees, and fly so swiftly from place to place, that whole provinces are devastated in a very short time. Barbot adds, terrific storms of hail, wind, and such like judgments from Heaven, are nothing to compare to this, which when it happens, there is no question to be made but that multitudes of the natives must starve, having no neighboring countries to supply them with corn, because those round about them are no better husbands than themselves, and are no less liable to the same calamities.[331]
Of a swarm, which in the year 1693 covered four square miles of ground, a German author has made the following estimate. Observing that, when he trod on the ground, at least three were crushed, and that in a square German measure, less than an English foot, ten were destroyed; and after determining the number of these square measures in the four miles, he concluded that ninety-two billions, one hundred and sixty millions of Locusts were congregated on the surface. This is altogether a very moderate calculation, for not only is their number more compact in breadth, but they are often piled knee-high on the earth.[332]
In 1724, Dr. Shaw was a witness of the devastations of these insects in Barbary. He has given us a description of their habits.[333] For four successive years, from 1744 to 1747, Locusts ravaged the southern provinces of Spain and Portugal.[334] In a letter from Transylvania, dated August 22d, 1747, a graphic description is given of two vast columns that overswept that country. “They form,” says the writer, “a close compact column about fifteen yards deep, in breadth about four musket-shot, and in length about four leagues; they move with such force, or rather precipitation, that the air trembles to such a degree as to shake the leaves upon the trees, and they darkened the sky in such a manner, that when they passed over us I could not see my people at twenty feet distance.”[335] This flight was four hours in passing over the Red Tower. The guards here attempted to stop them, by firing cannon at them; and where, indeed, the balls and shot swept through the swarm, they gave way and divided; but, having filled up their ranks in a moment, they proceeded on their journey.[336] In an item dated Hermanstadt, July 24, 1748, it is stated that on the day before, a hussar, coming from the plague committee, saw such a host of these insects near Szanda, that they covered the country for a mile round, and were so thick, that he was obliged to dismount from his horse, and halt for three hours, until the inhabitants of the district, coming with all sorts of instruments, beat about and forced with loud cries these pests to quit the spot.[337] In another item, dated Warsaw, August 15, 1748, it is stated that a certain prince sent out soldiers against the Locusts, who fired upon them not only with small arms, but with cannons. They succeeded in dividing the Locusts, but unluckily with the noise frightened away the storks and cranes which daily consume many of these insects.[338] Some stragglers from these swarms which so desolated Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, Hungary, and Poland, in the years 1747 and ’48, made their way into England, where they caused some alarm.[339] During this grand invasion of Europe, they even crossed the Baltic, and visited Sweden in 1749. Charles the Twelfth, in Bessarabia, imagined himself, it is said, assailed by a hurricane, mingled with tremendous hail, when a cloud of these insects suddenly falling, and covering both men and horses, arrested his entire army in its march.[340]
During the devastations committed by the Locusts in Spain in 1754, ’55, ’56, and ’57, a body of them entered the church of Almaden, and devoured the silk garments that adorned the images of the saints, not sparing even the varnish on the altars.[341]
In 1750 and ’53 Poland was again devastated by Locusts.[342] In June, 1772, there were several swarms of “large black flies of the Locust kind,” that did incredible damage to the fruits of the earth, seen in England. Salt water, it is said, was found effectual in destroying them.[343]
From 1778 to 1780 the empire of Morocco was terribly devastated by Locusts: every green thing was eaten up, not even the bitter bark of the orange and pomegranate escaping--a most dreadful famine ensued. The poor wandered over the country, in search of a wretched subsistence from the roots of plants. They picked, from the dung of camels, the undigested grains of barley, and devoured them with eagerness. Vast numbers perished, and the streets and roads were strewed with the unburied carcasses. On this sad occasion, fathers sold their children, and husbands their wives. When they visit a country, says Mr. Jackson, from whom we have gathered the above facts, speaking of the same empire, it behooves every one to lay in provision for a famine, for they stay from three to seven years. When they have devoured all other vegetables, they attack the trees, consuming first the leaves and then the bark.[344]
To prevent the fatal consequences which would have resulted from a passage of Locusts in 1780 near Bontzhida, in Transylvania, fifteen hundred persons were ordered each to gather a sack full of the insects, part of which were crushed, part burned, and part interred. Notwithstanding this, very little diminution was remarked in their numbers, so astonishing was their multiplication, until very cold and sharp weather had come on. In the following spring there were millions of eggs disinterred and destroyed by the people, who were levied “en masse” for the operation; but notwithstanding all this, many places of tolerable extent were still to be found, in which the soil was covered with young Locusts, so that not a single spot was left naked. These were finally, however, swept into ditches, the opposite sides of which were provided with cloths tightly stretched, and crushed.[345]