DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 267 ' 



from large globular cellules found upon the wild rosemary, 

 and supposed to be produced by a kind of gall-fly ^ ; and the 

 manure for which Scopoli informs us the hosts of Ephemeras 

 that annually emerge in the month of June from the Laz, a 

 river in Carniola, are employed by the husbandmen, who 

 think they have had a bad harvest unless every one has col- 

 lected at least twenty loads. '-^ 



Still less is it my intention to detain you in considering 

 the purpose to which in the West Indies and South America 

 the fire-flies are put by the natives, who employ them as 

 lanterns in their journeys, and lamps in their houses^ ; — or 

 the use as ornaments to which some insects are ingeniously 

 applied by the ladies, who in China embroider their dresses 

 with the elytra and crust of a brilliant species of beetle 

 (^Buprestis vittata) ; in Chili and the Brazils form splendid 

 necklaces of the golden ChrysomelidcB and brilliant diamond 

 beetles, &c. * ; in some parts of the Continent string together 

 for the same purpose the burnished violet-coloured thighs of 

 Geotrupes stercorarius, &c. ^ ; and in India, as I am informed 

 by Major Moor and Captain Green, even have recourse to 

 fire-flies, which they enclose in gauze and use as ornaments 

 for their hair when they take their evening walks. I shall 

 confine my details to the more important and general pro- 

 ducts which they supply to the arts, beginning with one in- 

 dispensable to our present correspondence, and adverting in 

 succession to the insects afibrding dyes, lac, ivax, honey, and 

 silk. 



No present that insects have made to the arts is equal in 

 utility and universal interest, comes more home to our best 

 afiections, or is the instrument of producing more valuable 

 fruits of human wisdom and genius, than the product of the 

 animal to which I have just alluded. You will readily conjec- 

 ture I mean the fly that gives birth to the gall-nut, from which 

 ink is made. How infinitely are we indebted to this little 

 creature, which at once enables us to converse with our absent 



t Molina's Chili, i. 174. 2 Ent. CarnioL 264. 



^ Captain Green was accustomed to put a fire-fly under the glass of his watch, 

 when he had occasion to rise very early for a march, which enabled him, without 

 difficulty, to distinguish the hour. 



4 Molina, i. 171. 285. ^ Latr. Hist. Nat. x. 143. 



