It appears that these insects have been used from an early period, for Thomas Gage, a religionist, who sailed to Mexico in 1625, says, in speaking of articles sold in the markets, that they had cakes made of a sort of scum collected from the lakes of Mexico, and that this was also sold in other towns.
Brantz Mayer, in his Mexico as it was and as it is, 1844, says: "On the lake of Texcuco I saw men occupied in collecting the eggs of flies from the surface of plants, and cloths arranged in long rows as places of resort for the insects. These eggs, called axayacatl, formed a favorite food of the Indians long before the conquest; and when made into cakes, resemble the roe of fish, having a similar taste and appearance. After the use of frogs in France, and birds'-nests in China, I think these eggs may be considered a delicacy, and I found that they are not rejected from the tables of the fashionable inhabitants of the capital."
The more recent observations of MM. Saussure, Salle, Virlet d'Aoust, etc. have confirmed the facts already stated, at least in the most essential particulars.
"The insects which principally produce this animal farinha of Mexico," says a writer in the Journal de Pharmacie, "are two species of the genus Corixa of Geoffroy, hemipterous (heteropterous) insects of the family of water-bugs. One of the species has been described by M. Guerin Meneville as new, and has been named by him Corixa femorata: the other, identified in 1831 by Thomas Say as one of those sold in the market at Mexico, bears the name of Corixa mercenaria. The eggs of these two species are attached in innumerable quantities to the triangular leaves of the carex forming the bundles which are deposited in the waters. They are of an oval form with a protuberance at one end and a pedicle at the other extremity, by means of which they are fixed to a small round disk, which the mother cements to the leaf. Among these eggs, which are grouped closely together, there are found others, which are larger, of a long and cylindrical form, and which are fixed to the same leaves. These belong to another larger insect, a species of Notonecta, which M. Guerin Meneville has named Notonecta unifasciata."
It appears from M. Virlet d'Aoust, that in October the lakes of Chalco and Texcuco, which border on the City of Mexico, are haunted by millions of "small flies," which, after dancing in the air, plunge down into the water, to the depth of several feet, and deposit their eggs at the bottom.
"The eggs of these insects are called hautle (haoutle) by the Mexican Indians, who collect them in great numbers, and with whom they appear to be a favorite article of food. They are prepared in various ways, but usually made into cakes, which are eaten with a sauce flavored with chillies."
Rev. Thomas Smith enumerates the following insects as eaten by the ancient Mexicans: The Atelepitz, "a marsh beetle, resembling in shape and size the flying beetles, having four feet, and covered with a hard shell." The Aloymani, "a marsh grasshopper of a dark color and great size, being no less than six inches long and two broad." The Ahuihuitla, "a worm which inhabits the Mexican lakes, four inches long, and of the thickness of a goose quill, of a tawny color on the upper part of the body, and white upon the under part; it stings with its tail, which is hard and poisonous." And the Ocuiliztac, "a black marsh worm, which becomes white on being roasted."
ORDER IX.
DIPTERA.
Culicidae — Gnats.
Concerning the generation of Gnats, Moufet says: "Countrey people suppose them, and that not improbably, to be procreated from some corrupt moisture of the earth."
A battle of Gnats (probably an appearance of Ephemera) is recorded in Stow's Chronicles of England, p. 509, to have been fought in the reign of King Richard II.: "A fighting among Gnats at the King's maner of Sheen, where they were so thicke gathered, that the aire was darkened with them: they fought and made a great battaile. Two partes of them being slayne, fel downe to the grounde; the thirde parte hauing got the victorie, flew away, no man knew whither. The number of the deade was such that they might be swept uppe with besomes, and bushels filled with them."
In the year 1736 the Gnats, Culex pipiens, were so numerous in England, that, as it is recorded, vast columns of them were seen to rise in the air from the steeple of the cathedral at Salisbury, which, at a little distance resembling columns of smoke, occasioned many people to think the edifice was on fire. At Sagan, in Silesia, in July, 1812, a similar occurrence gave rise in like manner to an alarm that the church was on fire. In May of the following year at Norwich, at about six o'clock in the evening, the inhabitants of that city were alarmed by the appearance of smoke issuing from the upper window of the spire of the cathedral, for which at the time no satisfactory account could be given, but which was most probably produced by the same cause. And in the year 1766, in the month of August, they appeared in such incredible numbers at Oxford as to resemble a black cloud, darkening the air and almost intercepting the rays of the sun. Mr. John Swinton mentions, that in the evening of the 20th, about half an hour before sunset, he was in the garden of Wadham College, when he saw six columns of these insects ascending from the tops of six boughs of an apple-tree, two in a perpendicular, three in an oblique direction, and one in a pyramidal form, to the height of fifty or sixty feet. Their bite was so envenomed, that it was attended by violent and alarming inflammation; and one when killed usually contained as much blood as would cover three or four square inches of wall. A similar column, of two or three feet in diameter and about twenty feet in height, was seen at eight o'clock in the evening of Sunday, July 14th, 1833, in Kensington Gardens. The upper portion of the column being curved to the east, the whole resembled the letter J inverted. The Gnats in every part of the column were in the liveliest motion. The author of the "Faerie Queene" seems to have witnessed the like curious phenomenon, which furnished him with the following beautiful simile:
As when a swarme of gnats at eventide Out of the fennes of Alow doe arise, Their murmuring small trumpets sownden wide, Whiles in the air their clust'ring army flies, That as a cloud doth seem to dim the skies; Ne man nor beast may rest or take repast, For their sharp wounds and noyous injuries, Till the fierce northern wind with blust'ring blast Doth blow them quite away, and in the ocean cast.
Ligon, in his History of Barbados, makes the following curious observation relative to a species of insects which he calls "Flyes," but which are more probably Gnats or Mosquitoes: "There is not only a race of all these kinds, that go in a generation, but upon new occasions, new kinds; as, after a great downfall of rain, when the ground has been
fiercely attacked by these insects as to be driven back; or that the inhabitants of various cities, as Moufet has collected from different authors, should, by an extraordinary multiplication of this plague, have been compelled to desert them. Also the latter part of the following story, related by Theodoret, seems entitled to belief: When Sapor, King of Persia, says this historian, was besieging the Roman City of Nisibis in the year 360, James, Bishop of that city, ascended one of the towers, and "prayed that Flies and Gnats might be sent against the Persian hosts, that so they might learn from these small insects the great power of Him who protected the Romans." Scarcely had the Bishop concluded his prayer, continues Theodoret, when swarms of Flies and Gnats appeared like clouds, so that the trunks of the elephants were filled with them, as also were the ears and nostrils of the horses and of the other beasts of burden; and that, not being able to get rid of these insects, the elephants and horses threw their riders, broke the ranks, left the army, and fled away with the utmost speed; and this, he concludes, compelled the Persians to raise the siege.
"As the Cossacks of the Black Sea are no agriculturists," says Jaeger, "but derive their subsistence from their numerous herds of horses, oxen, sheep, goats, and hogs, they suffer immensely, at times, from the ravages of the mosquitoes. Although they are fortunately not seen every year, these blood-suckers may be considered a real Egyptian plague among the herds of these Cossacks; for they soon transform the most delightful plains into a mournful, solitary desert, killing all the beasts, and completely stripping the fields of every animated creature. One thousand of these insatiate tormentors enter the nostrils, ears, eyes, and mouth of the cattle, who shortly after die in convulsions, or from secondary inflammation, or from absolute suffocation. In the small town of Elizabethpol alone, during the month of June, thirty horses, forty foals, seventy oxen, ninety calves, a hundred and fifty hogs, and four hundred sheep were killed by these flies."
Ammianus Marcellinus, in his Roman History, treating of the wild beasts in Mesopotamia, gives us the following curious zoological theory on the destruction of lions by mosquitoes:
"The lions wander in countless droves among the beds of rushes on the banks of the rivers of Mesopotamia, and in the jungles, and lie quiet all the winter, which is very mild in that country. But when the warm weather returns, as these regions are exposed to great heat, they are forced out by the vapours, and by the size of the Gnats, with swarms of which every part of that country is filled. And these winged insects attack the eyes, as being both moist and sparkling, sitting on and biting the eyelids; the lions, unable to bear the torture, are either drowned in the rivers, to which they flee for refuge, or else, by frequent scratchings, tear their eyes out themselves with their claws, and then become mad. And if this did not happen, the whole of the East would be overrun with beasts of this kind."
I have never heard of mosquitoes being turned to any good account save in California; and there, it seems, according to Rev. Walter Colton, they are sometimes made the ministers of justice. A rogue had stolen a bag of gold from a digger in the mines, and hid it. Neither threats nor persuasions could induce him to reveal the place of its concealment. He was at last sentenced to a hundred lashes, and then informed that he would be let off with thirty, provided he would tell what he had done with the gold; but he refused. The thirty lashes were administered, but he was still stubborn as a mule. He was then stripped naked, and tied to a tree. The mosquitoes with their long bills went at him, and in less than three hours he was covered with blood. Writhing and trembling from head to foot with exquisite torture, he exclaimed, "Untie me, untie me, and I will tell where it is." "Tell first," was the reply. So he told where it might be found. Then some of the party with wisps kept off the still hungry mosquitoes, while others went where the culprit directed, and recovered the bag of gold. He was then untied, washed with cold water, and helped to his clothes, while he muttered, as if talking to himself, "I couldn't stand that anyhow."