DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 277 



wings {PhaL ceraria Molina). Early in the spring vast 

 numbers of these caterpillars collect on the branches of the 

 Chila, where they form their cells of a kind of soft white 

 wax or resin, in which they undergo their transformations. 

 This wax, which is at first very white, but by degrees be- 

 comes yellow and finally brown, is collected in autumn by the 

 inhabitants, who boil it in water, and make it up into little 

 cakes for market.^ 



Honey, another well-known product of insects, has lost 

 much of its importance since the discovery of sugar ; yet at 

 the present day, whether considered as a delicious article of 

 food, or the base of a wholesome vinous beverage of home 

 manufacture, it is of no mean value even in this country ; 

 and in many inland parts of Europe, where its saccharine 

 substitute is much dearer than with us, few articles of rural 

 economy, not of primary importance, would be dispensed with 

 more reluctantly. In the Ukraine some of the peasants have 

 400 or 500 bee-hives, and make more profit of their bees than 

 of corn ^ ; and in Spain the number of bee-hives is said to be 

 incredible; a single parish priest was known to possess 5000.'^ 



The domesticated or hive-bee, to which we are indebted 

 for this article, is the same according to Latreille in every 

 part of Europe, except in some districts of Italy, where a dif- 

 ferent species (^Apis ligustica of Spinola) is kept — the same 

 probably that is cultivated in the Morea and the isles of the 

 Archipelago. Honey is obtained, however, from many other 

 species both wild and domestic. What is called rock honey 

 in some parts of America, which is as clear as water and very 

 thin, is the produce of wild bees, which suspend their clusters 

 of thirty or forty waxen cells, resembling a bunch of grapes, 

 to a rock ^ : and in South America large quantities are col- 

 lected from the nests built in trees by Trigona Amalthea, and 

 other species of this genus recently separated from Apis ^ ; 

 under which probably should be included the Bamhuros, 



1 Molina's Chili, i. 174. , 



2 Communications to the Board of Agricult. vii. 286. 



3 Mills on Bees, 77. 



4 Latr. in Humboldt and Bonpland, Becueil d'Observ. de Zoologie, 8cc. (Paris, 

 1805), 300. 5 Hill in Swammerdam, i. 181. note. 



6 Latr. ubi supr. 300. 



T 3 



