DAY BY DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 89, Issue 13895, 22 October 1918, Page 4

DAY BY DAY

In the hall of insect life at the American .Museum of NaInsects tural History there Used has-been arranged :>r\ For Food. exhibit of insects used

as food. These include caterpillars, highly esteemed by the -North American Indians, and ants which, alive or roasted, are relished oy Indians in North and South America and the natives of the East Indies and Burmah. There are also locusts, which the Moors fry in butter and serve as a delicacy. A hull.'tin issued by the museum states that one tribe of North American Indians regarded a mixture of pulverised ants, grasshoppers, and locusts, dried in the sun, as a relish. Another tribe preferred grasshoppers and crickets with roast-d ants os a variant. Moths, the bulletin added, are a favourite dish in Africa, and lumbermen in Maine are said to enjoy an occasional meal of large black wood ants. The beetle is eaten in Turkey, the Nile Valley, Lombardy, Moldavia, .lava, Peru, and Valacbia, and is said to be very nutritious and fattening. In central America the eggs of three aquatic hugs arc served as "cakes." In Nyasaland a paste of mayfliers and mosquitoes is considered a delicacy. The Mexicans manufacture a drink as strong as their pulque bv infusing a tiger beetle in alcohol.