insect of this kind that Aristolochia Sipho never forms fruit in this country.

Equally important is the agency of insects in fructifying the plants of the Linnean classes Monoecia, Dioecia and Polygamia, in which the stamens are in one blossom and the pistil in another. In exploring these for honey and pollen, which last is the food of several insects besides bees, it becomes involved in the hair, with which in many cases their bodies seem provided for this express purpose, and is conveyed to the germen requiring its fertilizing influence. Sprengel supposes that with this view some plants have particular insects appropriated to them, as to the dioecious nettle Catheretes Urtica, to the toad-flax Catheretes gravidus, both minute beetles, &c. Whether the operations of Cynips Psenes be of that advantage in fertilizing the fig, which the cultivators of that fruit in the East have long supposed, is doubted by Hasselquist and Olivier, both competent observers, who have been on the spot. Our own gardeners, however, will admit their obligations to bees in setting their cucumbers and melons, to which they find the necessity of themselves conveying pollen from a male flower, when the early season of the year precludes the assistance of insects. Sprengel asserts, that apparently with a view to prevent hybrid mixtures, insects which derive their honey or pollen from different plants indiscriminately, will during a whole day confine their visits to that species on which they first fixed in the morning, provided there be a sufficient supply of it; and the same ob

I have frequently observed Dermestes flavescens, Ent. Brit. eat both the petals and stamens of Stellaria Holosteum; and Mordelle will open the anthers with the securiform joints of their palpi to get at the pollen. Hasselquist's Travels, 253. Latr. Hist. Nat. xiii. 204. Willd. Grundriss, 352.

servation was long since made with respect to bees by our countryman Dobbs.

are

Thus we see that the flowers which we vainly think

And waste their fragrance on the desert air,"

though unvisited by the lord of the creation, who boasts that they were made for him, have nevertheless myriads of insect visitants and admirers, which, though they pilfer their sweets, contribute to their fertility.

I am, &c.

a Phil. Trans. xlvi. 536,

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,

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"." 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 that belong to the order Coleoptera are eaten in different parts of the world. The grub of the palm-weevil (Calandra 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 deliciousa character that was confirmed by some of the Greeks who tasted it". Madam Merian has figured one of these larvæ, and says that the natives of Surinam roast and eat them as something very exquisite. 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 (Cerambycidae) are accounted very great delica

* Walpole in Clarke's Travels, ii. 187. Even Mr. Boyle speaks with abhorrence of eating raw oysters. Walton's Angler, Life, p. 12. Ælian. Hist. 1. xiv. c. 13. quoted in Reaum. ii. 343.

Ins. Sur. 48.

cies in many countries; and the Cossus of Pliny, which he tells us the Roman epicures fattened with flour, most probably belonged to this tribe. Linné indeed, following the opinion of Ray, 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 larvae of Prionus coriarius, which I have myself extracted from the oak, or of one of its congeners. The grub of Cerambyx damicornis, which is 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. Mr. Hall informs me, that

a Hist. Nat. 1. xvii. c. 24.

b Wisdom of God, 9th ed. 307. Ray first adopted the opinion here maintained, that the Cossi were the larva of some beetle; but afterwards, from observing in the caterpillar of Bombyx Cossus 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.

c Amoreux has collected the different opinions of entomologists on the subject of Pliny's Cossus, which has been supposed the larva of Calandra 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. d Merian Ins. Sur. 24.