DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 181 



general products which they supply to the arts, beginning with one ^indis- 

 pensable to our present correspondence, and adverting in succession to 

 the insects affording dyes, lac, wax, honey, and silk. 



No present that insects have made to the arts is equal in utility and 

 universal interest, comes more home to our best affections, or is the in- 

 strument of producing more valuable fruits of human wisdom and genius, 

 than the product of the animal to which I have just alluded. You will 

 readily conjecture I mean the fly that gives birth to the gall-nut, from 

 which ink is made. How infinitely are we indebted to this little creature, 

 which at once enables us to converse with our absent friends and con- 

 nections, be their distance from us ever so great, and supplies the means 

 by which, to use the poet's language, we can 



" give to airy nothing 



A local habitation and a name ! " 



enabling the poet, the philosopher, the politician, the moralist, and the 

 divine, to embody their thoughts for the amusement, instruction, direc- 

 tion, and reformation of mankind. The insect which produces the gall-nut 

 is of the genus Cynips of Linne, but was not known to him or to Fabricius. 

 Oliver first described it under the name of Diplolepis galke tinctorice. 1 

 The galls originate on the leaves of a species of oak (Quercus infectoria) 

 very common throughout Asia Minor, in many parts of which they are 

 collected by the poorer inhabitants, and exported from Smyrna, Aleppo, 

 and other ports in the Levant, as well as from the East Indies, whither a 

 part of those collected are now carried. The galls most esteemed are 

 those known in commerce under the name of blue galls, being the produce 

 of the first gathering before the fly has issued from the gall. It will not be 

 uninteresting to you to know, that from these when bruised may occa- 

 sionally be obtained perfect specimens of the insect, one of which I lately 

 procured in this way. The galls which have escaped the first searches, 

 and from most of which the fly has emerged, are called white galls, and are 

 of a very inferior quality, containing less of the astringent principle than 

 the blue galls in the proportion of two to three. 2 The white and blue 

 galls are usually imported mixed in about equal proportions, and are then 

 called " galls in sorts." If no substitute equal to galls as a constituent 

 part of ink has been discovered, the same may be said of these productions 

 as one of the most important of our dyeing materials constantly employed 

 in dyeing black. It is true that this colour may be communicated without 

 galls, but not at once so cheaply and effectually, as is found by their con- 

 tinued large consumption, notwithstanding all the improvements in the 

 art of dyeing. 



Other dyeing drugs are afforded by insects, the principal of which are 

 Chermes, the Scarlet Grain of Poland, Cochineal, Lac-lake, and Lac-dye, all 

 of which are furnished by different species of Coccus. 



The first of these, the Coccus Ilicis, found abundantly upon a small 

 species of evergreen oak (Quercus cocciferd), common in the south of 

 France, and many other parts of the world, has been employed to impart 

 a blood red or crimson dye to cloth from the earliest ages, and was known 



1 Encyclop. Insect, vi. 281. It had better, perhaps, as compound trivial names are 

 bad, be called Cynips Scriptorum. 



2 Olivier's Travels in Egypt, &c. ii. G-l. 



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