The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1879-01-23
Will You Have a Bug?

Not in your ear, although great
many men do go off with a bug in their
ear, but is there any particular insect
that you would like for your dinner?
Better people than you have eaten
them, not from necessity, but choice.
People of far better education, broader
culture, higher station in society, have
eaten them and liked them. Aristotle
was fond of locusts, fried in sweet oil,
and declared in excellent classic Ian
guage, that "thcy are sweet" In At
RIGA this locust which is distant rela-
tive of our grasshopper, is baked into
kind of sweet cake. Some tribes make
bread of them. The people of Ceylon
eat the honey bee. In some of the
south Pacific Islands the natives catch
large quantities OF butterflies, rub their
wings off, roast and eat them. They
invariably make the man who eats them
terribly sick for few hours, but it
doesn't make any difference. His taste
is unchanged and as soon as he is able
to get around, he starts out after an
other mess of butterflies. In the cities
of Morocco to-day, locusts, the same
kind that John the Baptist ate, are sold
for food by the cart load. The Aus
tralians eat caterpillars, and the eco
nomical Chinese devour the unwound
silk worm. The peasants Of southern
France are not proud, but eat snail
soup and call for more.
In India the natives grind the white
ants into powder, which they sell for
-four, and the poorer people bake cakes
of it. They seem to enjoy them while
they live, but as it gives the eater the
cholera very quickly and very fatally.
he does not live long enough to eat
more than his weight in white ans. In
Africa they don't grind the ant into
-four. They just parch them like corn,
and crunch them down. In South
America the natives make cake of the
common ground ant, and Alexander
Won Humboldt says tie flavor of the
cake is pleasant. This ant is used in
favoring some of the cheaper brandies
of Sweden, on account of the formic
acid it secretes. In New Caledonia the
natives eat spiders. roasting them. The
Roman ladies used to eat the cossus, the
grub of caterpillar found in the oak
tree. They ate this when their order of
beauty was little too much inclined
to the "scrawny," for this grub was as
fattening as oil cake.
The Mexicans distil liquor from
the weevil, and use it as stimulant
Possibly this is where the slang term
"bng juice" frequently used by the
bibulous young American as he calls
for his morning decoction, finds its orr
in. This same beetle is broiled and eaten
in the West Indies. When the Larvae is
big enough to eat, this is what it looks
like: three inches long, one inch in cir
conference, color dingy yellow, look
ing like piece of fat, and black
head. 1t doesn't look tempting, but
roasted or broiled, seasoned with salt
or pepper, eaten with crumbed bread,
the Haytians prefer it to oysters.
Cheese mites are eaten by civilized
and cultured people very frequently,
but generally in happy ignorance. In
Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and por-
tions Of Iowa, few white savages who
ought to have known better, cooked
grasshoppers and ate them, and tried
to induce other civilized people to do
likewise. Our American Indians eat
we'll, they will do to close the chapter
with; They eat anything that crawls,
and can't wiggle fast enough to get
away from them. 1t is not a particu
larly appetizing subject, but it is in
teresting, and it may serve to make
you more content, some day when you
quarrel with your dinner, to remember
that good and bad food are, maybe,
only matters of taste, after all.-Hach-
eytemS.