ACRIDOPHAGI, in Ancient Geography, an Ethiopian people, represented as inhabiting near the deserts, and to have fed on locusts. This latter circumstance their name imports, the word being compounded of the Greek ακρις,
Acrisius locust, and paris, to eat. Dr Sparrman informs us,1 that
Acrobatica. "Locusts sometimes afford a high treat to the more
unpolished and remote hordes of the Hottentots; when,
as sometimes happens, after an interval of 8, 10, 15,
or 20 years, they make their appearance in incredible
numbers." The Abbé Poirier, also, in his Mémoire on the
Insects of Barbary and Numidia, informs us, that the
Moors make locusts a part of their food, that they go to
hunt them, fry them in oil and butter, and sell them
publicly at Tunis, at Bonne, &c. From these accounts,
we may see the folly of that dispute among the divines
about the nature of St John's food in the wilderness; some
maintaining the original word to signify the fruits of certain
trees; others, a kind of birds, &c.: but those who
adhered to the literal meaning of the text were at least
the most orthodox, although their arguments were perhaps
not so strong as they might have been had they had an
opportunity of quoting such authors as the above.