And having from curiosity tasted, not of the soup, but of the roast, really, if one could divest himself of the idea of eating an insect as we do an oyster or shrimp, without other preparation than simple roasting, they would not be considered very bad eating, even by more refined epicures than the Digger Indians.”[308] An item dated Tuesday, Aug. 21st, 1742, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, states: “Great damage has been done to the pastures in the country, particularly about Bristol, by swarms of Grasshoppers; the like has happened in Pennsylvania to a surprising degree.”[309] A common species in Sweden, the _Decticus verrucivorus_, is employed by the native peasants to bite the warts on their hands; the black fluid which it emits from its mouth being supposed to possess the power of making these excrescences vanish.[310] This black fluid, from whatever Grasshoppers it may be emitted, is called by our boys “tobacco spit,” which it much resembles; and they attribute to it also a wart-curing quality. When they catch one, they hold it between the thumb and fore-finger, and cry out,-- Spit, spit tobacco spit, And then I’ll let you go. The exuviæ of a Grasshopper called _Semmi_ or _Sebi_, Kempfer tells us, are preserved for medicinal uses, and sold publicly in shops both in Japan and China.[311] Dr. James, quoting Dioscorides, says: “Grasshoppers (_Locusta Anglica minor, vulgatissima_, Raii _Ins._ 60.) in a suffumigation relieve under a dysury, especially such as is incident to the female sex. The Locusta Africanus is a very good antidote against the poison of the Scorpion.”[312] After describing the Grasshopper of Italy, Brookes says: “It is often an amusement among the children of that country to catch this animal; and, by tickling the belly with their finger, it will whistle as long as they chuse to make it.”[313] In France, Grasshoppers are called _Sauterelles_, Hoppers; and in Germany, _Heupferde_, Hay-horses, because they generally feed on grasses, and their head has something of the form of a horse’s head. If Grasshoppers appear early in the summer in great numbers, they foretell famine and drouth,--a superstition obtaining in Maryland. Locustidæ--Locusts. Moufet says: “That Locusts should be generated of the carkasse of a mule or asse (as Plutarch reports in the life of Cleonides) by putrefaction, I cannot with philosophers determine; first, because it was permitted to the Jewes to feed on them; secondly, because no man ever yet was an eye-witness of such a putrid and ignoble generation of Locusts.”[314]