
762 The American Naturalist. [August, 
The white wax insect was frequently referred to in old works on 
China. One object of Mr. Hosie’s recent journey to the Chienchang 
valley near Mount Omi was to procure from the tree on which the 
insect live specimens of the foliage and flowers, for Sir Joseph Hooker. 
These he procured, and specimens of the living tree with the incrusted 
white wax on it, as well as samples of the latter, as it appears in com- 
merce, and of the Chinese candles made from it. The said valley is 
5,000 feet above the level of the sea, and is the great breeding ground 
of the insect. The tree is an evergreen, with the leaves springing in 
pairs from the branches, very thick, dark green, glossy, ovate, and 
pointed. In May and June it bears clusters of white- flowers, suc- 
ceeded by fruit of a dark purple color. The Kew authorities now say 
it is the Ligustrum lucidum,-or \arge-leaved privet. In March Mr. 
Hosie saw on the trees certain brown pea-shaped excrescences attached 
to the bark of the boughs and twigs. Opening some larger ones they 
presented either a whitey brown pulpy mass, or a crowd of minute 
insects looking like flour. Their movements were just perceptible to 
the naked eye. From two or three months later they become brown 
creatures, with six legs and a pair of antennez. These are the white- 
wax insect or Coccus pela. There is a beetle which is a parasite on the 
Coccus. It is a species of Brachytarsus. It is found in many of the 
excrescences above mentioned, and burrows in the inner lining of the 
scale, which seems to be its food. When a scale is plucked from the 
tree the Cocci escape by the hole which is made. It is in the town of 
Kiating that insect white wax is produced. This city is 200 miles to 
the northeast of the Chienchang valley. The scales are gathered in 
e valley, and made up into paper packets of about sixteen ounces 
each. Sixty of such packets make a load, and they are conveyed by | 
porters from the valley to Kiating in the night-time. If carried by 
day the insects would develop and escape from the scales. As it is, 
an ounce is lost in transit. A pound of scales in good years is-sold 
for half a crown. In bad years it is worth twice this amount. In 
favorable years a pound of scales produces four or five pounds of wax. 
In the plain around Kiating very many plots of ground are seen edged 
with stumps, from three or four to twelve feet high, with numerous 
sprouts growing from their gnarled heads, as on pollard willows in our 
own country. The tree is probably Fraxinus chinensis,;—a kind of 
ash. The leavesspring in pairs from the branches, and are light green, 
ovate, pointed, serrated, and deciduous. On the arrival of the scales 
in May they are made up in small packets of from twenty to thirty 
scales, which are enclosed in a leaf of the wood oil tree. Rice straw 

