220 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



a native of Guinea and Surinam, 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 beautiful velvet texture of its 

 down, which seems nearly related 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-colors of beautiful tints, not otherwise 

 easily obtainable, might be procured ffom the excrements of the larvae of 

 the common clothes-moth, which retain the color 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 color or shade of color, we 

 should merely have to feed our larvae with cloth of that tint.^ 



Wax, so valuable for many minor purposes, and deemed 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 upwards of 83,000/., were formerly 

 annually exported from Cuba to New Spain, where the quantity consumed 

 in the festivals of the church is immense, even in the smallest villages ; 

 and that the total export of the same island in 1803 was not less than 

 42,670 arrobas, worth upwards of 130,000/.^ Nearly the whole of the 

 wax employed in Europe, and by far the greater part of that consumed in 

 America, is the produce of the common hive-bee ; but in the latter quarter 

 of the globe a quantity by no means trifling is obtained from various wild 

 species. According to Don F. de Azara, the inhabitants of Santiago del 

 Estero gather every year not less than 14,000 pounds of a whitish wax 

 from the trees of Chaco.^ 



In China wax is also produced by another insect, which from the de- 

 scription of it by the Abbe Grosier seems to be a species of Coccus. With 

 this insect the Chinese stock the two kinds of tree (^Kan-la-chu and Choni- 

 la-chu), on which alone it is found, and which always afterwards retain 

 it. Towards the beginning of winter small tumors are perceived, which 

 increase until as big as a walnut. These are the nests (abdomens of the 

 females) filled with the eggs that are to give birth to the Cocci, which 

 when hatched disperse themselves over the leaves, and perforate the bark 

 under which they retire. The wax (called Pe-la, white wax, because so 

 by nature,) begins to appear about the middle of June. At first a few 

 filaments like fine soft wool are perceived, rising from the bark round the 

 body of the insect, and these increase more and more until the gathering, 

 which takes place before the first hoar frost in September. The wax is carried 

 to court, and reserved for the emperor, the princes, and chief mandarins. If 

 an ounce of it be added to a pound of oil, it forms a wax little inferior to that 

 made by bees. The physicians employ it in several diseases ; and the 

 Chinese, when about to speak in public, and assurance is necessary, previ- 

 ously eat an ounce of it to prevent swoonings"* ; a use of it for which happily 

 our less diffident orators have no call. This account is in the main con- 

 firmed by Geomelli Careri, except that he calls the wax insect a worm 



' Reaum. iii. 95. a Political Essay, iii. 62. 



^ Vuyage dans I'Amer. Merid. i. 162. ■» Grosier's China, i. 439. 



