\\2 ZOOLOGY OF INDIA. 



gez or manna, found in Persia and Armenia ;* but he seemed 

 doubtful whether to attribute to it an animal or a vegetable 

 origin. More recently General Hardwicke has described 

 an Indian insect under the name of Chermis mannifcr, of 

 the size of the domestic bug, and of a flattened oval form, 

 with a rounded tail. From its abdomen a quantity of sac- 

 charine substance is exuded, and assumes the form of a 

 bunch of feathers, with a consistence like that of snow. 

 The insects are found on the branches and leaves of trees 

 in millions, and they there generate this feather-like secre- 

 tion, till il becomes elongated, and, dropping on the leaves, 

 hardens upon them into a substance resembling the most 

 beautiful v/ax.t 



India abounds in hymenopterous insects, such as wasps 

 and bees. The latter build their nests in hollow trees and 

 rocky caverns, and produce great quantities of wax and 

 honey. At times they prove troublesome and even danger- 

 ous, and often annoved Mr. Forbes in his visits to the caves 

 at Salsette and the Elephanta, where they make their 

 combs in the fissures of the rocks and the recesses among 

 the figures, and hang in immense clusters. " I have known 

 a whole party put to the rout in the caverns of Salsette, 

 and obliged to return with their curiosity unsatisfied, from 

 having imprudently fired a gun to disperse the bees, who in 

 their rage pursued them to the bottom of the mountains."t 



As we are not aware of any remarkable pecuharities in 

 the history of either the Neuropterous or the Dipterous 

 orders of Indian entomology, we shall leave these exten- 

 sive divisions without any special comment, and conclude 

 our present summary with a short historical notice of an- 

 other insect-product of the East, of the highest value as a 

 branch of manufacturing industry, and now so universally 

 known under the name of silk. Though to ourselves 

 " familiar as household words," its nature and origin were 

 but obscurely, if at all, known in ancient times ; and in the 

 days of Aurelian it was valued at its weight in gold. This 

 was probably owing to the mode in which the material was 

 procured by the merchants of Alexandria, who had no direct 

 intercourse with China, the only country in which the silk- 



* Transactions of the Bombay Literary Society, vol. i. 



t Description of Gez or Manna, Asiatic Researches, vol. xiv. p. lo?- 



i Oriental Memoirs, vol. i. p. 46. 



