Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1883-03-08
curiosiiiss Of Diet.

maps the only Wand OF their produc-
tion accepted by the refined. Honey
affords some tropical savages large
proportion Of their daily fare, while
other wild races refuse it altogether.
1t is their honeyed contents, doubtless,
that makes bees. wasps and certain ants
palatable to some children of nature.
Waterton tells Of one wasp, blue, which
makes its nest among the dropping
leaves of trees along the Amazon,
whence it is driven by fire built un-
derneath. After killing or expelling
the old wasps, the Indians roast the
young grubs in their comb and eat
them.
In the southwestern part Of the
United States dwells the honey-making
ant, whose history is most singular. A
portion Of the members of each colony
while yet alive serve as receptacles for
the honey gathered by the rest, their
throats becoming distended until the
whole ant seems merely a pellucid bag
OF sweets. The liquid is almost pure
sugar, and is vastly relished in its un-
broken and animate packages by both
Indians and Mexicans.
No excuse like this, however, can be
found for the eating of ants as practiced
by some of the root-digging Indians Of
our West and BY East Africans. White
ants, for example, caught upon the
surface of a piece of fresh bark or
green hide, are put in a bag and dried
= for future reference" Pinto, speak
ing Of the Bihenos Of the Zambezi
country, says they "hunted out and
devoured termites with as Unsuitable
an appetite as an ant bear, gathering
them as they ran, and cramming them
by handfuls into their mouths" Bur
ton, in Zanzibar, attributes this out
landish habit to that craving for
animal food (which in these regions
becomes a principal of action, pas
sion" The boxers are reputed to let
their nails grow into talons for the
purposeof digginginto the hard-crusted
nests Of these white ants.
This is frightful fare but the Esqui-
maux enjoy the maggots found in
decayed fish, the Papuans (like the
Europeans) prefer cheese filed with
"mites," and wormy apples are thought
to crush into the best cider; caterpillars
are eaten by California Indians, the
eggs of flies laid on water-weeds by
Mexicans, moths by Bushmen, and
grubs from decayed logs by various
races. Mr.. f. Ober, camping one night
in Dominica, was offered by his Carib
servant a luscious morsel," extracted
from palm trunk, in the shape of
great white grub the larya of a
black beetle-which was soon brown
ing on the Goals for the boys supper.
Only few days ago we saw letter
from Morocco in a daily newspaper
telling how thefamine-stricken Moorish
peasantry were digging poisonous roots
and searching for large white grubs"
as the only help against starvation.
Our next item is earth-worms, the
bait Of the rural angler. In his
ethnology of Northern California
Stephen Powers notes: "When rain
falls in autumn enough to give the
earth a thorough soaking, and the
angle-worms begin to come to the
surface, then the YuH housekeeper
turns her mind to a good basket Of
worm soup Armed with her woman
stick, the badge of her sex, which is a
pole about six feet long and one and a
half inches thick, sharpened and fire
hardened at one end, she seeks out a
piece Of rich moist soil, and sets at
work. Thrusting the pole into the
ground about a foot, she turns it
around in every direction, and 50 agi-
tates the earth that the worms come to
the surface in large numbers from a
radius of two OF three feet around. She
gathers and carries these home, and
cooks them into a rich and oily soup
aboriginal vermicelli." Adjacent tribes
have the same habit.
fastening over the "manna in the
wilderness" produced by gall insect
over the spiders said to lie devoured
by Bushmen, and over some other
oddities Of articulated nutriment, let
us bring this catalogue to an end with
the national dish " Of Bechuana land
-locusts. That is the name given by
DR.. Halub, who saw his men made
happy by flock Of them, from which
a quantity were captured and thrown
on the embers. GA good many Of tn
men took them and devoured them
entire; others pulled off the feet and
the wings; the more fastidious staid
to take out the insides. In favor |
should consider them a dried and
strongly salted Italian anchovy,''
Substantially the same story comes
from elsewhere in Asia and Africa In
Morocco a flight of locusts isa welcome
visitation the insects are brought
into market by the bushel. and sold as
cheap food to the poor.-Harper's
Basar.
Cape Breton is almost peopled with