136 INTRODUCTION OF INSECTS. 
ther East to Europe in the sixth century, and new silk-spinners 
which feed on the castor-oil bean and the ailanthus, have recently 
been reared in France and in South America with promising 
success.* The cochineal, long regularly bred in aboriginal 
America, has been transplanted to Spain, and both the kermes 
insect and the cantharides have been transferred to other cli- 
mates than their own. The honey-bee must be ranked next to 
the silkworm in economical importance. This useful creature 
was carried to the United States by European colonists, in the 
latter part of the seventeenth century; it did not cross the Mis- 
sissippi till the close of the eighteenth, and it is only in 1853 
that it was transported to California, where it was previously 
unknown. The Italian bee, which seldom stings, has lately 
been introduced into the United States. 
The insects and worms intentionally transplanted by man 
bear but a small proportion to those accidentally introduced 
by him. Plants and animals often carry their parasites 
with them, and the traffic of commercial countries, which 
exchange their products with every zone and every stage 
of social existence, cannot fail to transfer in both directions 
the minute organisms that are, in one way or another, asso- 
* The silkworm which feeds on the ailanthus has naturalized itself in the 
United States, but the promises of its utility have not been realized. 
+ Bee husbandry, now very general in Switzerland and other Alpine regions, 
was formerly an important branch of industry in Italy. It has lately been 
revived and is now extensively prosecuted in that country. It is interesting 
to observe that many of the methods recently introduced into this art in Eng- 
land and the United States, such for example as the removable honey-boxes, 
are reinventions of Italian systems at least three hundred years old. See 
Gao, Le venti Giornate ddl Agriculiura, cap. xv. 
The temporary decline of this industry in Italy was doubtless in a great 
measure due tothe use of sugar which had taken the place of honey, but per- 
haps also in part to the decrease of the wild vegetation from which the bee 
draws more or less of his nutriment. 
A new wax-producing insect, a species of coccus, very abundant in China, 
where its annual produce is said to amount to the value of ten millions of 
francs, has recently attracted notice in France, The wax is white, resembling 
spermaceti, and is said to be superior to that of the bee. 
