316 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



dollars the pound,) have been substituted with great 

 success, and are said to vesicate more speedily, and with 

 less pain, at the same time that they cause no strangury*: 

 and in China they have long employed the Mylabris Ci- 

 chorei, which seems to have been considered the most 

 powerful vesicatory amongst the ancients, who however 

 appear to have been acquainted with the common Can- 

 tharis vesicatoria also, and to have made use of it, as well 

 as of Cctonia aurata and some other insects mentioned by 

 Pliny b . Another species of Mylabris has been described 

 by Major-general Hardwicke in the Asiatic Tramac- 

 tions c , plentiful in all parts of Bengal, Bahar, and Oude, 

 which is fully as efficacious as the common Spanish fly. 



But it is as supplying products valuable in the arts 

 and manufactures, that we are chiefly indebted to in- 

 sects. In adverting to them in this view, I shall not 

 dwell upon the articles derived from a few species in par- 

 ticular districts, and confined to these alone, such as the 

 soap which in some parts of Africa is manufactured from 

 a beetle (Clilanius saponarius d ); the oil which Molina 

 tells us is obtained in Chili from large globular cellules 

 found upon the wild rosemary, and supposed to be pro- 

 duced by a kind of gall-fly c ; and the manure for which 

 Scopoli informs us the hosts of Ephemerae that annually 

 emerge in the month of June from the Laz, a river in 

 Carniola, are employed by the husbandmen, who think 

 they have had a bad harvest unless every one has col- 

 lected at least twenty loads f . 



Still less is it my intention to detain you in considering 



a Illiger Mag. i. 256. >' Hist. Nal. 1. xix. c. 4. c Vol. v. 213. 

 d Carabus,O\iv. JEteo7W.Hi.69. /. iii./. 26. Compare Philanthropist, 

 ii. 210. e Molina's Chili, i, 174. i Knt. Cannot. 264. 





