DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 185 
and cochineal conjointly, and without any inferiority in the colour 
obtained." 
Some other insects besides the Cocci afford dyes. Reaumur tells us, 
that in the Levant, Persia, and China, they use the galls of a particular 
species of Aphis for dyeing silk crimson, which he thinks might lead us to 
try experiments with those of our own country.? That dyes might be 
thus obtained seems probable from an observation of Linné’s, in his 
Lapland Tour, upon ‘hg galls produced by Aphis pini on the extremities 
of the leaves of the spruce-fir, which, he informs us, when arrived at ma- 
turity, burst asunder, and discharge an orange-coloured powder which 
stains the clothes*; and Mr. Sheppard confirms this observation, the galls 
of this Aphis abounding upon fir trees in his garden. In fact, we are told 
that Terminalia citrina, a tree common in India, yields a species. of gall, 
the product of an insect, which is sold in every market, being one of the 
most useful dyeing drugs known to the natives, who dye their best and 
most durable yellow with it. A species of mite (Zrombidium tinctorium), 
a native of Guinea and Surinam, is also employed as a dye; and it would 
be worth while to try whether our 7’ holosericeum, so remarkable for the 
dazzling brilliancy of its crimson and the beautiful velvet texture of its 
down, which seems nearly related to J’. tinctorium, would not also afford a 
valuable tincture. It is not likely, perhaps, that many better and cheaper 
dyes than we now possess can be obtained from insects ; but Reaumur has 
suggested that water-colours of beautiful tints, not otherwise easily ob- 
tainable, might be procured from the excrements of the larve of the 
common clothes-moth, which retain the colour of the wool they have 
eaten unimpaired in its lustre, and mix very well with water. To get a 
fine red, yellow, blue, green, or any other colour or shade of colour, we 
should merely have to feed our larvae with cloth of that tint.> 
Wax, so valuable for many minor purposes, and deemed with us so in- 
dispensable to the comfort of the great, is of still more i penane in those 
parts of Europe and America in which it forms a considerable branch of 
trade and manufacture, as an article of extensive use in the religious cere- 
monies of the inhabitants. Humboldt informs us, that not fewer than 
25,000 arrobas, value upwards of 83,000/., were formerly annually ex- 
ported from Cuba to New Spain, where the quantity consumed in the 
festivals of the Church is immense, eyen in the smallest villages ; and that 
the total export of the same island in 1803 was not less than 42,670 ar- 
robas, worth upwards of 130,000/.° Nearly the whole of the wax em- 
ployed in Europe, and by far the greater part of that consumed in America, 
is the produce of the common hive-bee; but in the latter quarter of the 
globe a quantity by no means trifling is obtained from various wild species. 
According to Don F, de Azara, the inhabitants of Santiago del Estero 
gather every year not less than 14,000 pounds of a whitish wax from the 
trees of Chaco.” 
Tn China wax is also produced by another insect, which from the de- 
Scription of it by the Abbé Grosier seems to be a species of Coccus, 
1 Bancroft on Permanent Colours, ii, 20. 49. 
2 Reanm, iii. Preface, xxxi. 
® Lach, Lapp. i. 258, 4 Trans. of the Soc. of Arts, xxiii, 411, 
5 Reaum. iii. 95. 
® Political Essay, iii. 62. 7 Voyage dans V Amer, Mérid. i. 162. 
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