326 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



yields a species of gall, the product of an insect, which 

 is sold in every market, being one of the most useful 

 dyeing drugs known to the natives, who dye their best 

 and most durable yellow with it ^. A species of mite 

 (Tromhidhun thictorium), a native of Guinea and Suri- 

 nam, is also employed as a dye ; and it would be worth 

 while to try whether our T. holosericeum^ so remarkable 

 for the dazzling brilliancy of its crimson and the beauti- 

 ful velvet texture of its down, which seems nearly re- 

 lated to T. tinctorium^ would not also afford a valuable 

 tincture. It is not likely, perhaps, that many better and 

 cheaper dyes than we now possess can be obtained from 

 insects; but Reaumur has suggested that water-colours of 

 beautiful tints, not otherwise easily obtainable, might be 

 procured froui the excrements of the larvae of the com- 

 mon clothes-moth, which retain the colour of the wool 

 they have eaten unimpaired in its lustre, and mix very 

 well with water. To get a fine red, yellow, blue, green, 

 or any other colour or shade of colour, we should merely 

 have to feed our larvae with cloth of that tint\ 



Wax, so valuable for many minor purposes, and deem- 

 ed with us so indispensable to the comfort of the great, 

 is of still more importance in those parts of Europe and 

 America in which it forms a considerable branch of 

 trade and manufacture, as an article of extensive use in 

 the religious ceremonies of the inhabitants. Humboldt 

 informs us, that not fewer than 25,000 arrobas, value up- 

 wards of 83,000/., are annually exported from Cuba to 

 New Spain, where the quantity consumed in the festivals 

 of the Church is immense even in the smallest villages ; 



' Trnm. of the Soc. of Arts, xxiii. 411. '' Reauiu. iii. l>o. 



