WHITE WAX INSECT. 93 



fill up the cracks with wax, as fast as they occur. 

 It is a curious fact, that these insects make use of 

 the empty cocoons as honey-pots, first lining them 

 with wax, and strengthening them round the edges 

 with a waxen ring. Some nests contain as many 

 as fifty or sixty of these honey- pots, containing 

 stores for daily use, and which are never sealed 

 over like the cells of the hive bee, because all the 

 colony except one female dies at the approach of 

 winter, and this solitary female lies in a torpid 

 state during that season. 



But bees are not the only wax-makers in the 

 world. There is, in China, an insect called the 

 white wax insect, which, in its caterpillar state, 

 deposits a sort of wax on the branches of trees. 

 Sir George Staunton tells us that accident led him 

 to observe some swarms of uncommon insects busily 

 employed upon the branches of a shrub, not at 

 that time in fruit or flower, but whose leaves and 

 general growth somewhat resembled our privet. 

 These insects, not much bigger than common flies, 

 were of curious structure, having an appendage to 

 their bodies, in shape like the tail feathers of our 



