DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 185 



and cochineal conjointly, and without any inferiority in the colour 

 obtained. 1 



Some other insects besides the Cocci afford dyes. Reaumur tells us, 

 that in the Levant, Persia, and China, they use the galls of a particular 

 species of Aphis for dyeing silk crimson, which he thinks might lead us to 

 try experiments with those of our own country. 2 That dyes might be 

 thus obtained seems probable from an observation of Linne's, in his 

 Lapland Tour, upon the galls produced by Aphis pini on the extremities 

 of the leaves of the spruce-fir, which, he informs us, when arrived at ma- 

 turity, burst asunder, and discharge an orange-coloured powder which 

 stains the clothes 3 ; and Mr. Sheppard confirms this observation, the galls 

 of this Aphis abounding upon fir trees in his garden. In fact, we are told 

 that Terminalia citrina, a tree common in India, yields a species of gall, 

 the product of an insect, which is sold in every market, being one of the 

 most useful dyeing drugs known to the natives, who dye their best and 

 most durable yellow with it. 4 A species of mite (Trombidium tinctorium), 

 a native of Guinea and Surinam, is also employed as a dye ; and it would 

 be worth while to try whether our T. holosericeum, so remarkable for the 

 dazzling brilliancy of its crimson and the beautiful velvet texture of its 

 down, which seems nearly related to T. tinctorium, would not also afford a 

 valuable tincture. It is not likely, perhaps, that many better and cheaper 

 dyes than we now possess can be obtained from insects ; but Reaumur has 

 suggested that water-colours of beautiful tints, not otherwise easily ob- 

 tainable, might be procured from the excrements of the larvae of the 

 common clothes-moth, which retain the colour of the wool they have 

 eaten unimpaired in its lustre, and mix very well with water. To get a 

 fine red, yellow, blue, green, or any other colour or shade of colour, we 

 should merely have to feed our larva? with cloth of that tint. 5 



Wax, so valuable for many minor purposes, and deemed with us so in- 

 dispensable to the comfort of the great, is of still more importance in those 

 parts of Europe and America in which it forms a considerable branch of 

 trade and manufacture, as an article of extensive use in the religious cere- 

 monies of the inhabitants. Humboldt informs us, that not fewer than 

 25,000 arrobas, value upwards of 83,000/., were formerly annually ex- 

 ported from Cuba to New Spain, where the quantity consumed in the 

 festivals of the Church is immense, even in the smallest villages ; and that 

 the total export of the same island in 1803 was not less than 42,670 ar- 

 robas, worth upwards of 130,000/. 6 Nearly the whole of the wax em- 

 ployed in Europe, and by far the greater part of that consumed in America, 

 is the produce of the common hive-bee ; but in the latter quarter of the 

 globe a quantity by no means trifling is obtained from various wild species. 

 According to Don F. de Azara, the inhabitants of Santiago del Estero 

 gather every year not less than 14,000 pounds of a whitish wax from the 

 trees of Chaco. 7 



In China wax is also produced by another insect, which from the de- 

 scription of it by the Abbe* Grosier seems to be a species of Coccus. 



1 Bancroft on Permanent Colours, ii. 20. 49. 



2 Reaum. iii. Preface, xxxi. 



3 Lack. Lapp. i. 258. * Trans, of the Soc. of Arts, xxiii. 41L 



5 Reaum. iii. 95. 



6 Political Essay, iii. 62. 1 Voyage dans VAmer. Mrid. i. 162. 



