After Guttemberg's death, Faust associated himself with Pierre Schoeffer, who had discovered the art of casting types in metal, and then appeared successively the Latin Psalter, the Bible, and other works, printed in a very improved style to those produced by the first efforts of the inventor.

In 1462, when Mayence was given up to the horrors of civil war, the workmen employed by Guttemberg and Faust were dispersed, and the art of printing thus found its way to Germany, England, and Italy. Faust himself went to Paris, taking with him his Latin Bible, which he was declared to have produced by sorcery; the letters in red ink were believed to be traced in blood he was arrested and thrown into prison; but Louis XI., who, despot as he was, had at least the merit of not suppressing the inventions and improvements of science, restored him to liberty on condition of his making known his secret.

William Caxton is generally regarded as the first who introduced the art of printing into England. During a long residence abroad, he acquired a practical knowledge of the art, and on his return to England he established a printing-office in a chapel adjoining Westminster Abbey.

All the productions of his press are objects of great interest to book-collectors. He commenced printing in England about the year 1474.

The inauguration of the statue of Guttemberg took place at Strasbourg in June 1840, and in three days upwards of one hundred thousand persons of all ranks and classes flocked into the town, eager to pay tribute to the memory of the man from whose hands the first printed book is believed to have emanated.

THE VAGARIES OF MAN'S APPETITE.

SOME one has said, "bold was the man who first ventured to eat a raw oyster;" but we doubt this, inasmuch as we know that in all countries tenanted by savage or semi-civilized races, the molluscous tribes, or shell-fish, which abound along the low shores, have ever contributed and still contribute to the sustenance of man. In all regions the progress of civilization, as a general rule with some exceptions, tends rather to increase than diminish the number of animal matters which the culinary art renders agreeable. With regard to these exceptions, we may observe that in our own island the porpoise, formerly so highly esteemed, never now figures as a dish upon the dinner-table, although its flesh is regarded a delicacy by the Greenlander. The ancient Romans regarded as luxuries meats from which a modern Roman would perhaps turn with disgust. The young wild ass was once in high request; so were puppy dogs; and land-snails were fed in pens and fattened to enormous dimensions for the table. Even still in Italy and Spain, the land snail (Helix Pomatia) is used as food; but the flesh of horses and asses, if eaten, is sold under some other denomination: even, as at public dinners in our metropolis, the tongues of horses pass among the uninitiated as the tongues of

oxen.

In Tartary, and in the Pampas of South America, horseflesh is considered excellent; and we know of an instance in which a gentleman of rank in our island ordered for dinner the heart of a young horse, which, having met with an accident, was obliged to be shot.

In our country we are disgusted with the idea of eating the flesh of horses or asses; and as for land-snails, not even the learned gentlemen celebrated by Smollett could bring their stomachs into Roman condition. In all this there is singular contradiction. We eat oysters, mussels, cockles, scallops, whelks, and periwinkles, but not land or fresh-water snails; we eat eels, but not snakes, delicious as the latter are accounted by men of other regions; we eat crabs, lobsters, cray-fish, prawns, and shrimps, but neither scorpions, centipedes, spiders, nor insects generally, save and except the mites and the hoppers in cheese.

Here, confining ourselves to insects which are and have been esteemed dietary luxuries, we may make out a goodly list, proving

now much caprice governs our appetite; we may say caprice, for why should the calipash and calipee of the sea-turtle be in such request among the gourmands of our country, when they would turn with loathing from a dish of serpent-soup? In the West Indies the great iguana (a lizard) is deemed exquisite; why should not crocodile flesh be at a premium? Captain Sturt declares it to be delicate. However, let us here confine ourselves to insects, as we have already proposed.

Insects, we say, have been and still are, among various nations, favourite articles of diet. From the earliest times the locust has been eaten, and is still used as food. Locusts and wild honey were the food of the Baptist in the wilderness; and at the present day locusts are eaten by the Bedouins, who collect them principally in the beginning of April. There are several ways of dressing them. One plan is to half-roast them upon an iron plate, dry them in the sun, add salt to them, and store them in sacks for use. Another plan is to throw them alive into boiling water, with a quantity of salt, and in a few minutes remove them, and the heads, feet, and wings being torn away, to dry them and store them, as salted viands, for ordinary consumption. These are eaten often fried in butter, or are mixed with butter and spread upon unleavened bread. Sometimes they are reduced to powder, of which small cakes, not unlike gingerbread cakes, are made. In the towns of Arabia, generally, there are shops in which preserved locusts are sold by measure. Though not generally eaten in Syria, still some of the poorer fellahs of the Haouran will, when pressed by hunger, feed upon them in this case they break off the heads and wings, and take out the entrails, before drying them in the sun, which latter process the Bedouins neglect.

According to Burckhardt, the Bedouins of Sinai alone abstain from using locusts as an article of food. The ancient Æthiopians and the Parthians ate locusts, as do the Arabs now; the Hottentots eat them whenever they can procure them, and in the Mahratta country (India) the common people salt and eat them. Thus, then, during many ages and in different countries has the locust made some amends for its ravages, by affording a "dainty dish."

The ancient Greeks ate the larva of the cigala or tree-hoppers, and also the perfect insect; and the Romans regarded as a delicate morsel the fat grub of some moth or beetle, which they fed upon flour, until it had acquired the requisite plump. The larva of this beetle lives in the decayed trunks of oaks and birches.

ness.

Hillhouse states that the eta-tree in the Warow villages of Guiana has the green part of the trunk tenanted by a large beetle with a long snout (one of the Curculionida?), wherein it lays its eggs, and from which, in about a fortnight, issue grubs, which grow to the size of the two first joints of the forefinger. These are a favourite fry both of the Warows and Creoles, and are scarcely distinguishable from beef-marrow.-(Mem. in Geographical Journal, vol. iv.)

Is it to this insect that Cuvier, or rather his coadjutor Latreille, alludes, in the following sentence? Speaking of a species of the great genus Prionus (P. cervicornis), he says, "on mange la larve du P. cervicorne, qui vit dans le bois du fromager;" that is, the larva of the P. cervicornis, which lives in the wood of a malvaceous plant (Cotonnier mapou), is eaten as food. We know not the species of tree designated by the word "fromager;" it is a tree of the Antilles, but we think it a pity that Latreille did not give it a Latin specific.

Knox, in his History of Ceylon,' informs us, that bees are there eaten, no doubt when the stomach is replete with honey; a poor repayment for their industrial activity; it is like killing the goose for the golden eggs.

In various parts of Africa and of India, the white termite ant is an article of food, and the Chinese (who relish puppy-dogs as well as did the old Romans) eat the larva of the silk moth, and those also of a species of Sphinx or Hawk-moth.

The grub of the palm weevel (Cordylia palmarum), in size about as large as the thumb, has been long in request in the East Indies, and also (if the species be the same) in the West Indies, where it is called Grugru.

If bees are eaten, why should ants escape with impunity? The termite ant is eaten in Africa, and Smeathman declares it to be exquisite. In Norway a sort of vinegar is made by an infusion of ants in water; the formic acid is the vinegar principle; sharp and pungent, we do not doubt, although it has not been our lot to have ever tasted it.

The Indigenes of Australia eat everything snakes, lizards, insects; to parody Moore, "they eat all that is eatable, all that they can;" " but among their insect favourites is the Bugong moth; while tree-hoppers or Tettigoniæ serve as welcome entremets. We have a good and lively account of the Bugong moth furnished us by Mr. Bennett. The Bugong mountains present a sort of table range of granite formation, in the interior of New South

Wales, where the Lyre-bird finds a secluded home. During the months of November, December, and January, answering to our summer months, these mountains are the resort of millions of moths, which there congregate in shoals, as do herrings at certain seasons on our shores, and attract the native tribes from all the adjacent districts. The bodies of these insects contain a quantity of oil, and are sought after as a luscious and agreeable food. According to Mr. Hamilton Hume, the Bugong moth frequents the snowmountains south of New South Wales, and forms the principal food of the Aborigines during summer, these insects ascending at that season from the lowlands to the more elevated spots.

These Bugong moths congregate on the surface, and in the crevices of the masses of granite, in incredible quantities. In order to procure them with facility, the natives make smouldering fires at the base of the rocks on which they are swarming; thus the moths are suffocated, and are swept off in bushels-full at a time. The company then commences the preparation of the feast.

"A circular space is cleared upon the ground of a size proportioned to the number of insects to be prepared: on it a fire is lighted and kept burning until the ground is considered to be sufficiently heated, when, the fire being removed and the ashes cleared away, the moths are placed upon the heated ground, and stirred about until the down and wings are removed from them; they are then placed on pieces of bark, and winnowed to separate the dust and wings mixed with the bodies: they are then either eaten, or placed in a wooden vessel, called a Walbun or Culibun, and pounded by a piece of wood into masses or cakes, resembling lumps of fat, comparable in colour and consistence to dough made with smutty wheat mixed with fat. The bodies of these moths are large and filled with a yellowish oil resembling in taste a sweet nut. These masses will not keep above a week, and seldom even for that time; but by smoking them, the natives are able to preserve them for a much longer period. The first time this diet is used, violent vomiting and other debilitating effects are produced; but after a few days the natives become accustomed to the food, and then thrive and fatten exceedingly upon it."

But to return to countries nearer home. What shall we think of a taste for beetles in the harems of Egypt? Fabricius assures us that the Turkish ladies, dwelling in Egypt, eat a species of beetle (Blaps silloné) cooked with butter, for the purpose of acquiring the proper degree of embonpoint. This insect is regarded as efficacious in affections of the ear, and for curing the sting of the scorpion. (Cuvier, vol. v. p. 17.)

Spiders must not be excluded from among the list of dainties. Spiders, correctly speaking, are not of the class Insecta, but we do not here attempt to moot nice distinctions. Well, then, spiders