186 LAC AND LAC DTB. 



CHAPTER VIII.— UTILIZATION OF ANIMAL 

 PRODUCTS. 



The most important of these are lac and lac dye ; silk ; honey, 

 wax, and manna ; and hides, horns, bones, and ivory. Under this 

 head may also be included hunting and fishing, 

 SECTioif I. — Lac and lac dye. 



The lac insect ( Coccus Laced) frequents a great many species of 

 trees and shrubs, but of these Schleichera trijuga, Butea frondosa, 

 Zizyphus Jujuba, and Shorea lacdfera are alone gregarious enough 

 to be regularly exploited for lac without resort to artificially-raised 

 plantations.* 



The lac insect breeds'twice, and, in Mysore, even three times a 

 year, but the spring brood yields the largest quantity of lac. As 

 the insect can survive and form thick incrustations only on twigs of 

 generous growth, the trees on which it is cultivated sbould always 

 be pruned and lopped, in order to induce an abundant crop of 

 strong Juicy shoots. In the case of Butea frondosa, it will doubt- 

 less be best to adopt pollarding outright. 



To cause the insect to spread over tbe whole tree or bush, the 

 brood lac, as it is called, which is nothing more than fresh-broken 

 lac from which the young insect has not yet swarmed out, is cut 

 up into short pieces 6 to 12 inches long and tied up at various points 

 in the crown, after being surrounded with a few wisps of straw in 

 order to protect the young brood inside from injurious weather in- 



* Besides the above, the following trees and shrubs are frequented by the lac 

 insect : — 



Acacia arahica and Catechu, 

 Anona squamosa. 

 Butea frondosa and superba. 

 Carissa Carandas. 

 Celtis lioxhnrghii, 

 Croton lacciferua. 

 Bailer gia latifolia ani paniculata. 

 Dichrostachys einerea. 

 Dolichandrone Sheedii, 

 £!riolcena Sooheriana. 

 JErythrina indioa. 

 Feronia JElephantum. 

 Fieus bengalensis, cordifolia, elas- 

 tica, glomerata, and infectoria. 



Garuga pinnata. 

 Kydia calycina. 

 Lagerstraemia parviflora. 

 Mangifera indiea. 

 Nephelium Litchi, 

 Ougeinia dalhergioides. 

 Pithecolohium dulce. 

 Prosopis spicigera. 

 Pterocarpus Marsupium. 

 Schima crenata. 

 Shorea rohusta. 

 Tectona grandis. 

 Terminalia tomentosa. 

 I Zizyphus Tylopyra. 



