179-' improvements in India: 3^ 



" I have tried the Chinese experiment upon it as you 

 direct, with oil, and found the produce to be an excellent 

 tallow ; but its original qualities, as a kind of wax, are . 

 those from whence I expect the principal benefit will be 

 derived. 



" As far as I have been able to satisfy myself from the 

 small quantity I pofsefs, which was put into my hands by 

 the obliging friendfliip of Mr Wifset of the committee of 

 warehouses, it is a real wax, but a sort that pofsefses ma- 

 ny qualities, far superior to those of the ordinary bees 

 wax, even after the substai.ce has pafsed through all the 

 stages of expensive manufacture, necefsary to render it fit 

 for domestic uses, and hence it will always bear a much 

 higher price ; and as in China it is reserved for the use of 

 the mandarines, and the emperor, it is likely, when we 

 have discovered all its valuable properties, that it will 

 sell for many times the value of that article. 



" I find, by experiment, that though boiling water will 

 not render it fluid, it will make it so soft as easily to pafs 

 through the texture of coarse linen j it may, therefore, 

 easily be freed from the hulks of the insects with which, 

 in its crude state, it is encumbered, by the same procefs 

 as is used in the preparation of (lieil lac, and afterwards it 

 may be prefsed together into a solid form for the conve- 

 nience of freight. Pofsibly by the addition of heavy Huids, 

 or by the use of a digester, it may be obtained, in the 

 first instance, in a state of actual liquidity. 



" The price at which it may be procured, is a subjecr. 

 of which you yourself can be the only judge ; from the 

 mode of propagating the insect, (which I take to be a spe- 

 cies of the coccus) pointed out by the Chinese, and which 

 is wonderfully similar to the mode of managing cochineal 

 in America, it is fair to conjecture that it will in time bt 

 obtained at a reasonable price. 



