266 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



tremely common and noxious insects, while the C. vesicatoria 

 is sold there at sixteen dollars the pound) have been sub- 

 stituted with great success, and are said to vesicate more 

 speedily, and with less pain, at the same time that they cause 

 no strangury ^ : 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 Cantharis 

 vesicatoria also, and to have made use of it, as well as of 

 Cetonia aurata and some other insects mentioned by Pliny. ^ 

 Another species of Mylahris has been described by Major- 

 General Hardwicke in the Asiatic Transactions^^ plentiful in 

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

 cacious as the common Spanish fly ; and in other parts of 

 India Cantharis gigas and Violacea are employed, as is C 

 ruficeps in Sumatra and Java ; C. atomaria in Brazil ; C. 

 Syriaca in Arabia; and in some parts of Europe Lydus 

 (^Mylahris Fab.) trimaculatus.'^ 



But it is as supplying products valuable in the arts and 

 manufactures, that we are chiefly indebted to insects. In 

 adverting to them in this view, I shall not dwell upon the 

 articles derived from a few species in particular districts, and 

 confined to these alone, such as the soap which in some parts 

 of Africa is manufactured from a beetle (^Chloinius sapo- 

 narius ^) ; the oil, which Molina tells us, is obtained in Chili 



1 Illiger, Mag. 1. 256. 2 jjist. Nat. 1. xix. c. 4. 3 Vol. v. 213. 



4 Westwood's Mod. Class, of Ins. i. 297. See also Burmeister's Manual of 

 Ent. p. 562., who says that the species used by the ancients appears to have been 

 Mylahris Fiieslini Panz., which is very abundant in the south of Europe, and is 

 sometimes found in Germany. The active blistering principle in all these insects 

 has been detected by M. Robiquet, and named by him Cnntharidine, which has 

 been ascertained by M. Bretonneau, and especially by M. Leclerc, who has ex- 

 amined a great number of insects with this view, to be found amongst coleop- 

 terous insects of the family of Catdharidce only, though not in all the species of 

 this family, nor even in all the species of the same genus. M. Leclerc, who 

 conceives that cantharidine is secreted by a peculiar apparatus, states, that it 

 is not destroyed either by the action of the air or of time ; and as it must exist in 

 a spider of the United States ( Tegenaria medicinalis Hentz ; Journ. Acad. Nat. 

 Sci. of Philadelphia, 1821, p. 53. pi. 5.), which is there extensively employed 

 as a vesicatory, he examined if this principle is to be found in the Tegenaria of 

 France or in other spiders, but without success. (Leclerc, Essai snr les Epipas- 

 tiques, Paris, 1835, quoted in Guerin, Bulletin Zoologique, i. 95.) 



5 Carahus Oliv., Entom.'in^ 69. t. iii. f. 26. Compare Fhilanthropist, ii. 210. 



