

a * Entomology. . 761 
ENTOMOLOGY:.! 
The White Wax Insect.—The following account of the pro- 
duction and use of the white wax of China, about which very little is 
known in America will be read with interest. We find it in the issue 
of the N. C. and S. C. and C: Gazette for March 26th, 1891. 
The native candles of the north are made of sheep’s tallow, but 
those of the central provinces are partly manufactured from bean oil, 
which is able to be utilized for this purpose by the addition of white 
insect wax in the proportion of about one-eighth, Where bean oil 
cannot easily be procured the seeds of S#ldingia sebifera are employed. 
‘his tree grows most extensively in the south. A picul of its seeds 
yields twenty or thirty catties of tallow, and when this has been pressed 
out, subsequent grinding and steaming result in the production of an 
oil called ch'tmg yu out of the albumen. Insect-made white wax is 
added in the proportion of three catties to a hundred catties of the 
tallow. It is the wax which gives it sufficient consistency to remain 
thoroughly congealed in ordinary temperatures. From Hankow in 
1889 about 120,000 piculs of the tallow of the tallow tree were exported, 
and of this quantity nearly half found its way to Shanghai in the same 
year. An enormous quantity of candles are made in Shanghai and its 
vicinity, and the pressing out of bean oil for the manufacture employs 
a large number of water buffaloes. The old industry is that which has 
for many ages made use of the tallow-tree product. The new has 
grown out of the Newchwang trade which supplies Shanghai with 
beans. The vast industry which is an essential to the use of the vege- 
table tallow began, we are told, about six centuries ago. Till recently 
we knew generally that the wax is made at Luchou Fu, in Anhui, at 
Kiahing in Chékiang, at Hinghua Fu in Fukien, as well as in Hunan, 
in Kweichou, in Yunnan and Szechuan. But the processes were never 
fully described, and there was a need for fuller information. That 
want has been supplied by the inquiries of Mr. Alexander Hosie, of 
the British consular service in Szechuan. The tree on which the 
insects produce the wax is an inhabitant of a different part of the 
country from that which produces the insects. Chinese ingenuity 
brings the insects from their birthplace to their new home many miles 
away, and sets them to the work of wax-making. It is this curious 
history which Mr. Hosie has been the first thoroughly to investigate, 
! Edited by Prof. C. M. Weed, Hanover, N. H. 
