114 HALF HOURS WITH rSTSECTS. [Packard. 



labor or risk to the cultivator. The eggs of tlic insect which 

 produces the wax are annually imported from the districts 

 of Ilochin or Iloking and AVliy-li-tzou in Yunnan (where 

 the culture of the eggs forms a special occupation) by mer- 

 chants who deal in nothing else but pa-la-tan, ' white wax 

 eggs.' The egg clusters which w^ere described to me as about 

 the size of a pea are transported carefully packed in baskets 

 of the leaves of tlie pa-la-shu, ' white Avax tree,' which re- 

 sembles a privet-shrub, and arrive in Szchuan in March, 

 where they are purchased at about twenty taels per basket. 

 The trees by the middle of Marcli have thrown out a number 

 of long tender slioots and leaves, and then the clusters of 

 eggs enclosed in balls of the young leaves are suspended to 

 the shoots by strings. About the end of the month the larvai 

 make their appearance, feed on the branches and leaves, and 

 soon attain the size of a small caterpillar or rather a wingless 

 house fly apparently covered with white down, with a delicate 

 plume-like appendage, curving from the tail over the back. 

 So numerous are they that, as seen by me in Yunnan, the 

 branches of the trees are whitened by them, and appear as if 

 covered with feathery snow. The grub proceeds in July to 

 take the chrysalis form, burying itself in a white wax secre- 

 tion, just as a silkworm wraps itself in its cocoon of silk. 

 All the branches of the trees are thus completely coated 

 with w\ax an inch thick, and in the beginning of August are 

 lopped off close to the trunk and cut into small lengths 

 which arc tied up in bundles and carried to the boiling houses, 

 where they are transferred without further preparation to 

 large caldrons of water, and boiled until every particle of 

 the waxy su^l)stance rises to the surface. The wax is 

 skimmed off and run into moulds in which shape it is ex- 

 ported to all parts of the empire. 



It would seem that the wax growers find that it does not 

 pay them to reserve any of the insects for their reproductive 

 state, and hence the necessity of importing the eggs from 



18 



