180 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



Pliny. 1 Another species of Mylabrls has been described by Major- 

 General Hardwicke in the Asiatic Transactions' 2 , plentiful in all parts of 

 Bengal, Bahar, and Oude, which is fully as efficacious as the common 

 Spanish fly; and in other parts of India Cantharis gigas and violacea are 

 employed, as is C. ruficeps in Sumatra and Java ; C. atomaria in Brazil ; 

 C. Syriaca'm Arabia ; and in some parts of Europe Lydus {Mylabris Fab.) 

 trimaculatus? 



But it is as supplying products valuable in the arts and manufactures 

 that we are chiefly indebted to insects. In adverting to them in this view, 

 I shall not dwell upon the articles derived from a few species in particular 

 districts, and confined to these alone, such as the soap which in some 

 parts of Africa is manufactured from a beetle (Chl&nius saponarius 4 } ; the 

 oil which, Molina tells us, is obtained in Chili from large globular cellules 

 found upon the wild rosemary, and supposed to be produced by a kind of 

 gall-fly 5 : and the manure for which Scopoli informs us the hosts of Ephe- 

 merae 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 collected at least twenty loads. 6 



Still less is it my intention to detain you in considering the purpose to 

 which in the West Indies and South America the fire-flies are put by the 

 natives, who employ them as lanterns in their journeys, and lamps in 

 their houses 7 ; or the use as ornaments to which some insects are 

 ingeniously applied by the ladies, who in China embroider their dresses 

 with the elytra and crust of a brilliant species of beetle (Bupreslis vittata)- 

 in Chili and the Brazils form splendid necklaces of the golden Chrysomelidce 

 and brilliant diamond beetles, &c. 8 ; in some parts of the Continent string 

 together for the same purpose the burnished violet-coloured thighs of 

 Geotrupes stercorarius, &c. 9 ; and in India, as I am informed by Major 

 Moor and Captain Green, even have recourse to fire-flies, which they 

 inclose in gauze, and use as ornaments for their hair when they take their 

 evening walks. I shall confine my details to the more important and 



i Hist. Nat. I xix. c. 4. 2 Vol. v. 213. 



3 WestwoocTs Mod. Class, of Ins. i. 297. See also Burmeister's Manual of Ent. 

 p. 562., who says that the species used by the ancients appears to have been Mylabris 

 Fiieslini Panz., which is very abundant in the south of Europe, and is sometimes found 

 in Germany. The active blistering principle in all these insects has been detected 

 by M. Robiquet, and named by him Cantharidine, which has been ascertained by M. 

 Bretonneau, and especially by M. Leclerc, who has examined a great number of in- 

 sects with this view, to be found amongst coleopterous insects of the family of Can- 

 tharidce only, though not in all the species of this family, nor even in all the species 

 of the same genus. M. Leclerc, who conceives that Cantharidine is secreted by a 

 peculiar apparatus, states that it is not destroyed either by the action of the air or 

 of time; and as it must exist in a spider of the United States (Tegenaria medicinalis 

 Hentz. ; Journ. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia, 1821, p. 53. pi. 5.), which is there 

 extensively employed as a vesicatory, he examined if this principle is to be found in 

 the Tegenaria of France or in other spiders, but without success. (Leclerc, Essai 

 sur les Epipastiques, Paris, 1835, quoted in Guerin, Bulletin Zoologique, i. 95 ) 



4 Carabus Oiiv., Entom. iii. 69. t. iii. f. 26. Compare Philanthropist, ii. 210. 



5 Molina's Chili, i. 174. Ent. CarnioL. 264. 



7 Captain Green was accustomed to put a fire-fly under the glass of his watch, when 

 he had occasion to rise very early for a march, which enabled him without difficulty 

 to distinguish the hour. 



8 Molina, i. 171. 285. Latr. Hist. Nat. x. U3. 



