o 4 g NATURAL HISTORY. 



them, and then use them as food. In the Mediterranean region other 

 trees are punctured, and the resulting manna is sold for its medicinal 



qualities. 



Still another species of economic importance is the wax-insect of China, 

 concerning which we extract the following from the pages of Mr. C. C. 

 Cooper : " On the third day we entered the white wax country, so named 

 from its producing the famous white wax of Szechuen, which has been 

 erroneously called vegetable wax. This district was less undulating than 

 that of the tea-gardens, and presented to the eye a view of extensive plains 

 surrounded by low hills. The plains were all under wax and rice cultiva- 

 tion, the wax-trees being planted round the embankments of the small 

 paddy-fields, which were at most thirty yards square. The country thus 

 presented to the passing traveler the appearance of extensive groves of 

 tree-stumps, each as thick as a man's thigh, and all uniformly cut down 

 to a height of about eight feet, without a single branch. The cultivation 

 of wax is a source of great wealth to the province of Szechuen, and ranks 

 in importance second only to that of silk. Its production is not attended 

 with much labor or risk to the cultivator. The eggs of the insect which 

 produces the wax are annually imported from . . . Yunnan (where the 

 culture of the eggs forms a special occupation) by merchants who deal in 

 nothing else but pa-la-tan, — white wax eggs. The egg-clusters, which 

 were described to me as about the size of a pea, are transported, carefully 

 packed in baskets of the leaves of the pa-la-shu — white wax tree — which 

 resembles a privet-shrub, and arrive in Szechuen in March, where they are 

 purchased at about twenty taels per basket. The trees by the middle of 

 March have thrown out a number of long, tender shoots and leaves, and 

 then the clusters of eggs enclosed in balls of the young leaves are sus- 

 pended from the shoots by strings. About the end of the month the 

 larvse make their appearance, feed on the branches and leaves, and soon 

 attain the size of a small caterpillar, or rather a wingless house-fly, appar- 

 ently covered with white down, with a delicate plume-like appendage, 

 curving from the tail over the back. So numerous are they that, as seen 

 by me in Yunnan, the branches of the trees are whitened by them, and 

 appear as if covered with feathery snow. The grub proceeds in July to 

 take the chrysalis form, burying itself in a white wax secretion, just as a 

 silk- worm wraps itself in its cocoon of silk. All the branches of the trees 

 are thus completely coated with wax an inch thick, and in the beginning 

 of August are lopped off close to the trunk, and cut into small lengths, 

 and carried to the boiling-houses, where they are transferred without 

 further preparation to large caldrons of water, and boiled until even- 

 particle of the wax rises to the surface. The wax is skimmed off and run 



