Another kind is _Chitin_, which constituted the animal food of St. John the Baptist, when he fed upon locusts and wild honey. It is the basis of the bodily structure of insects; of the spiral tubes which permeate them throughout, and are so wonderfully displayed when we examine insect anatomy by aid of the microscope; also of their intestinal canal, their external skeleton, scales, hairs, &c. It similarly forms the true skeleton and bodily framework of crabs, lobsters, shrimps, and other crustacea, bearing the same relation to their shells, muscles, &c., that ordinary gelatin does to the bones and softer tissues of the vertebrata; it is ‘the bone of their bones, and the flesh of their flesh.’ It is obtainable by boiling these creatures down, but is more difficult of solution than the ordinary gelatin of beef, mutton, fish, and poultry. To this difficulty of solution in the stomach, the nightmare that follows lobster suppers is probably attributable. I once had an experience of the edibility of the shells of a crustacean. When travelling, I always continue the pursuit of knowledge in restaurants by ordering anything that appears on the bill of fare that I have never heard of before, or cannot translate or pronounce. At a Neapolitan restaurant I found ‘_Gambero di Mare_’ on the _Carta_, which I translated ‘Leggy things of the sea,’ or sea-creepers, and ordered them accordingly. They proved to be shrimps fried in their shells, and were very delicious—like whitebait, but richer. The chitin of the shells was thus cooked to crispness, and no evil consequences followed. If reduced to locusts, I should, if possible, cook them in the same manner, and, as they have similar chemical composition, they would doubtless be equally good. Should any epicurean reader desire to try this dish (the shrimps, I mean), he should fry them as they come from the sea, not as they are sold by the fishmonger, these being already boiled in salt water; usually in sea water by the shrimpers who catch them, the chitin being indurated thereby. The introduction of fried and tinned locusts as an epicurean delicacy would be a boon to suffering humanity, by supplying industrial compensation to the inhabitants of districts subject to periodical plagues of locust invasion. The idea of eating them appears repulsive _at first_, so would that of eating such creepy-crawly things as shrimps, if no adventurous hero had made the first exemplary experiment. Chitin is chitin, whether elaborated on the land or secreted in the sea. The vegetarian locust and the cicala are free from the pungent essential oils of the really unpleasant cockchafer.