72 NATAL AND CHINESE INSECT-WIIITE-WAX. 



1856. j) r M'Cartee procured specimens for Mr. Fortune, which that 



gentleman lias taken to India with the view of introducing the 

 insect into that country. He also sent specimens to William 

 Lockhart, Esq., of Shanghai, through whose kindness that 

 exhibited was received. 



It may be remarked that, according to the Chinese accounts, 

 the trees upon which the wax-insect lives are of two or three 

 species. Of one of these, resembling an ash, a dried specimen 

 was on the table. Mr. Lockhart has in his garden at Shanghai a 

 Wax-tree, small wax-tree of this species which he hopes shortly to colonize 

 with the wax-insect. The tree has not yet flowered, and its bo- 

 tanical position is as yet undetermined. A living plant of the 

 same species was brought to England by Mr. Fortune, from 

 whose hands it passed into those of Messrs. Eollisson and Sons, 

 of Tooting. 



Specimens of the manufactured insect-wax from China were 

 also on the table. 



NOTE ON INSECTS PEODUCING WAX FROM POET 

 NATAL AND CHINA. 



BY J. 0. WESTWOOD, Esq., F.L.S., &c. 

 (Read at the same meeting, April 15th, 1856.) 



THE wax-insect from Natal, exhibited by Mr. W. W. Saunders, 

 is the female of a large species of Coccus, analogous to the Coccus 

 ceriferus; each female being about the size of a pea, and of a dark 

 chestnut colour, but encased in a solid layer of white waxy 

 matter nearly a quarter of an inch thick, so as to make the 

 entire insect as large as a boy's marble ; the under side being 

 flattened, or rather concave, so as to fit the convex surface of 

 the branch on which they are found. The size of the insect 

 would render it easy of observation, and the thickness of the wax 

 would make it a more important object of commerce than the 

 wax-insects of South America, 



The Chinese wax-insect, of which so fine a specimen on the 

 branch has been exhibited by Mr. Daniel Hanbury, differs from 



