DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 313 



calculable importance as a vesicatory, but is now admi- 

 nistered internally in many cases with very good effect. 

 In Europe, the only insect used with this view is the 

 Lytta vesicatoria ,• but in America the L. cinerea and vit- 

 tata (which are extremely common and noxious insects, 

 while the L. vesicatoria is sold there at sixteen dollars the 

 pound,) have been substituted with great success, and 

 are said to vesicate more speedily, and with less pain, 

 at the same time that they cause no strangury a : and in 

 China they have long employed the Mylahris Cichorei, 

 which seems to have been considered the most powerful 

 vesicatory amongst the ancients, who however appear to 

 have been acquainted with the common Lytta vesicatoria 

 also, and to have made use of it, as well as of Cetonia au- 

 rata and some other insects mentioned by Pliny b . An- 

 other species of Mylabris has been described by Colonel 

 Hardwicke in the Asiatic Transactions c , plentiful in all 

 parts of Bengal, Bahar, and Oude, which is fully as ef- 

 ficacious as the common Spanish fly. 



But it is as supplying products valuable in the arts 

 and manufactures, that we are chiefly indebted to in- 

 sects. In adverting to them in this view, I shall not 

 dwell upon the articles derived from a few species in par- 

 ticular districts, and confined to these alone, such as the 

 soap which in some parts of Africa is manufactured from 

 a species of Carabus (C. saponarius, OHv. d ); the oil 

 which Molina tells us is obtained in Chili from large 

 globular cellules found upon the wild rosemary, and sup- 



a Illiger Mag. i. 256. b Hist. Nat. 1. xix. c. 4. « Vol. v. 213, 

 * Oliv. Entom, iii. 69. t. m.f. 26. Compare Philanthropist, u. 310. 



