I Have Often Eaten Snakes And Always Found Them Palatable
And Nutritive, Though It Was Difficult To Stew Them To A Tender State.
Summer here, as in all other countries, brings with it a long list of insects.
In the neighborhood of rivers and morasses, mosquitoes and sandflies
are never wanting at any season, but at Sydney they are seldom numerous
or troublesome.
The most nauseous and destructive of all the insects
is a fly which blows not eggs but large living maggots, and if the body
of the fly be opened it is found full of them. Of ants there are
several sorts, one of which bites very severely. The white ant
is sometimes seen. Spiders are large and numerous. Their webs
are not only the strongest, but the finest, and most silky I ever felt.
I have often thought their labour might be turned to advantage. It has,
I believe, been proved that spiders, were it not for their quarrelsome
disposition which irritates them to attack and destroy each other,
might be employed more profitably than silk-worms.
The hardiness of some of the insects deserves to be mentioned. A beetle
was immersed in proof spirits for four hours, and when taken out crawled away
almost immediately. It was a second time immersed, and continued in a glass
of rum for a day and a night, at the expiration of which period
it still showed symptoms of life. Perhaps, however, what I from ignorance
deem wonderful is common.
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