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Chinese White Wax : a Curious Industry. 



— George F. Smithers, consul at Chung-king, 

 China, is authority for the following : In the 

 Chien-ch'ang Valley, and especially in the 

 neighborhood of Chung-king, which is the 

 chief wax-producing country, perhaps the 

 most prominent tree is the Ligustrum luci- 

 dum, or " insect tree." It is an evergreen, 

 with dark-green, glossy, ovate leaves spring- 

 ing in pairs from the branches. On these 

 trees, attached to the bark, are numerous 

 brown, pea-shaped excrescences. The larger 

 of these scales are readily detachable, and 

 when opened present either a whitish-brown 

 pulpy mass, or a crowd of minute animals 

 looking like a mass of flour. Upon close 

 examination these masses are found to con- 

 sist of a swarm of brown or dirty-white 

 creatures, each provided with six legs and a 

 pair of antennae. This is the white wax in- 

 sect, the Coccus pe-la of Westwood. Many of 

 the scales also contain either a small white 

 bag or cocoon covering a pupa, or a perfect 

 imago in the shape of a small black beetle. 

 This beetle is a species of Brachylarsus. If 

 left undisturbed in the broken scale, the 

 beetle, which from his ungainly appearance 

 is called by the Chinese niu-erh (buffalo), will 

 continue to burrow in the inner lining of the 

 scale, which is apparently his food. The 

 Chinese declare that the beetle eats his mi- 

 nute companions in the scale. When a scale 

 is plucked from a tree, an orifice where it 



was attached to the bark is disclosed. By 

 this orifice the cocci are enabled to escape 

 from the detached scales. Two hundred 

 miles to the northeast of Chien-ch'ang, and 

 separated from it by a series of mountain 

 ranges, is the prefecture of Chia-ting, within 

 which insect white wax as an article of com- 

 merce is produced. At the end of April the 

 scales are gathered from the trees, made up 

 into paper packets, each weighing about six- 

 teen ounces, and transported by porters across 

 the mountains to Chia-ting. Great care has 

 to be taken in the transit of the scales. The 

 porters travel only during the night, as the 

 high temperature during the day would cause 

 a too rapid development of the insects and 

 their escape from the scales. Notwithstand- 

 ing the greatest precautions, however, each 

 packet loses about an ounce in transit. West 

 from the right bank of the Min River, on 

 which the city of Chia-ting lies, stretches a 

 plain to the foot of the sacred O-mei range 

 of mountains. This plain is an immense rice 

 field, being well watered by streams from 

 the western mountains. Almost every plot 

 of ground here, as well as the bases of the 

 mountains, are thickly edged with stumps, 

 varying from two or four to a dozen feet in 

 height, with numerous sprouts rising from 

 their gnarled heads. These stumps resemble 

 at a distance our own pollard willows. The 

 leaves spring in pairs from the branches ; 

 they are light green, ovate, serrated, and 



