92 Indian Museum Notes. \_ Vol, II. 



certain amount of wax, but is very rare and has never been utilised com- 

 mercially. It was shown too, by Dr. Pearson, 1 as long ago as the year 

 1794, that its wax is not altogether suitable for candle-making, as both 

 the wax itself, and also mixtures of the wax with olive oil, when made into 

 candles, burn with a dim smoky light, and give off a resinous odour. 



A good deal of confusion in our knowledge of the matter has arisen 

 from the fact that a totally distinct insect, which is known to ento- 

 mologists as Phromnia marginella, produces considerable quantities of a 

 white sugary secretion, which has no connection with wax, but on the con- 

 trary, is totally useless for candle-making, thongh it has sufficient super- 

 ficial resemblance to white wax to have often been mistaken for it. This 

 fact not only accounts for many of what would otherwise appear to be 

 hopeless contradictions in the reports of different observers on the subject, 

 but has also led to the supposition that white wax is to be procured in 

 India in very much larger quantities than is really the case. The mistake 

 seems to have originated in the figures and description given of the White 

 Wax Insect of China, in the year 1797, by Sir George Staunton, 2 this being 

 the origin of the more elaborate figures and description published in 

 Westwood's edition of Donovan's Insects of China 3 ; in each case an 

 insect closely allied to Phromnia marginella being erroneously described 

 as the White Wax Insect of China. The error was very clearly pointed 

 out in the year 1843 by Captain Hutton,* but the mistake, once made, 

 seems to have cropped up again and again, the belief in it being further 

 extended by some observations made, about the year 1850, by Dr. 

 Charles Murchison. 5 Dr. Murchison examined the flocculeut append- 

 ages attached to the bodies of the larva? of an insect, which, from 

 his description, seems to have belonged either to the species Phrom- 

 nia marginella or to something very much like it, and he found that 

 these appendages consisted of what he believed to be wax. An ex- 

 amination, recently made by Mr. Holland of the flocculent append- 

 ages of larvae of Phromnia marginella preserved in the collections of 

 the Indian Museum, has not confirmed Dr. Murchison's observations. 6 



1 " Observations and experiments on a Wax-like Substance resembling the Pela of the 

 Chinese, collected at Madras by Dr. Anderson, and called by him,' White lac' " : Philos. 

 Trans., Eoyal Soc. Lond., vol. 84, p. 383 (1794). 



8 Embassy to China, London, 1797, vol. i, p. 353. 



3 London, 1842, pi. 17. 



4 Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, vol. xii, p. 898 (1843). 



6 Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond., vol. ii, p. 379 (1848—55). 



6 The flocculent matter attached to the specimens preserved in the Indian Museum 

 collection consists of fibrous matter which not ouly refuses to melt, but, on the contrary, 

 decomposes when heated, does not dissolve in naphtha, and under the microscope appears to 

 consist of minute curved filamentous particles. That observed by Dr. Murchison, on the 

 other hand, melted on heating into transparent colourless wax, which was readily soluble in 

 naphtha and which crystallised on cooling, into acicular crystals, arranged in stellate 

 masses, this form of crystalisation being one readily observable in the wax secreted by 

 Ceroplastes ceriferus. 



