Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 219, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1915 — Eaters of Locusts. [ARTICLE]

Eaters of Locusts.

While the locust (just now of news interest) is essentially a plant de* vourer and famine bringer, there are many well authenticated cases in history showing that populations reduced to the last extremity have utilized the destructive insect as food. Diodorus Siculus relates that an Ethopian tribe was known as Acridophagi ("eaters of locusts”), while Aristotle writes of a certain part of Greece where the people regarded them as delicacies. Layard, the explorer, found on the engraved monuments pictures of dried and preserved locusts on rods, presumably Indicating their use as food. It is not believed that any race today eats them. They are regarded everywhere in the East as an abhorrent calamity and the presence of vast swarms in Palestine this springTs held to be a forerunner of complete crop failure, both of fruits and ’cereals. — Christian Herald.