June I, 1891.] THE TfJOPUCAL AGRICULTURIST. 869 
WHITE WAX IN CHINA. 
The native candles of the north are made of 
sheep’s tallow but those of the central provinces 
ate partly manufactured from bean oil which is 
able to be utilised for this purpose by the addition 
of white insect wax in the proportion of about 
one-eighth. Where bean oil cannot easily beprocured 
the seeds of StilUnf/ia sebifera are employed. This 
tree grows most extensively in the south. A piuul 
of its seeds yields twenty or thirty catties of 
tallow, aud when this has been pressed out, sub- 
sequent grinding and steaming result in the pro- 
duction of an oil culled clving yu out of the 
albumen. Insect-made white wax is added in the 
proportion of three catties to a hundred catties 
of the tallow. It is the wax which gives it suliieient 
consistency to remain thoroughly congealed in 
ordinary temperatures. Erom Hankow in 1889 
about 120,000 piculs of the tallow of the tallow 
tree were exported and of this quantity nearly 
half found its way to Shanghai in the same year. 
An enormous quantity of candles are made in 
Shanghai and its vicinity and the pressing out of 
bean oil for the manufacture employs a largo 
number of water buHaloes. The old industry is 
that which has for many ages made use of the 
tallow tree product. The new has grown out of 
the Newchwang trade which supplies Shanghai 
with beans. The vast industry which is an essential 
to the use of the vegetable tallow, began, we are 
told about six centuries ago. Till recently we 
knew generally that the wax is made at Luchou 
Fii, in Anhui, at Kiahing in Chekiang, at Hinghua 
Fu in Fukien, as well as in Hunan, in Kweiehou, 
in Yunnan and Szechu.n. But the processes were 
never fully described and there was a need for 
fuller information. That want has been recently 
supplied by the inquiries of Mr. Alexander Hosie 
of the British Consular service in Szechuan. The 
tree on which the insects produce the wax is an 
inhabitant of a different part of the country from 
that which produces the insects. Chinese ingenuity 
brings the insects from their birthplace to their 
new home many miles away and sets them to the 
work of wax-making. It is this curious history 
which Mr. Hosie has been the first thoroughly to 
investigate. 
The white wax insect was frequently referred 
to in old works on China. One object of Mr. 
Hosie’s recent journey to the Chieuchang valley 
near Mount Omi was to procure from the tree on 
which the insect lives specimens of the foliage 
aud flowers, for Sir Joseph Hooker. These he 
procured and Bpeoimens of the living tree with the 
inorusted white wax on it as well as samples of 
the latter as it appears in commerce and of the 
Chinese candles made from it. The said valley 
is 5,01)0 feet above the level of the sea and is the 
great breeding ground of the insect. The tree is 
an evergreen with the leaves springing in pairs 
from the brauobes, very thick, dark green, glossy, 
ovate and pointed. In May and June it bears 
clusters of white flowers ; succeeded by fruit of a 
dark purple colour. The Kew authorities now say 
it is the ligustniiii lucidum or large-leaved privet. 
Ill March Mr, Hosie saw on the tives certain 
brown pea-shaped exorescenoes attached to the bark 
of the boughs aud twigs. Opening some larger 
ones they presentei either a whitey brown pulpy 
mass, or a crowd of minute insects looking like 
flour. Their movements were just perceptible to 
the naked eye. From two to ihreo mouths later 
they become brown creatures with six legs aud a 
pair of antenmu. These are the white wax insect 
or cocewi pda. There is a beetle which is a parasite 
on the coccus. It is a species of bracijtarsus. It 
is found in many of the exerosoenoes above ineu- 
109 
tioaed and burrows in the inner lining of the scale 
which seems to bo its food. When a scale is 
plucked from the tree cocci escape by the 
hole which is made. It is in the town of Kiating 
that insect white wax is produced. This city is 
200 miles to the north-east of the Chienobang 
valley. The scales are gathered in the valley and 
made up into paper packets of about sixteen ounces 
each. Sixty of such packets make a load and 
they are conveyed by porters from the valley to 
Kiating in the night time. If carried by day the 
insect^ would develop and escape from the scales. 
As it is, an ounce is lost in transit. A pound of 
scales in good years is sold for half a crown. In 
bad years it is worth twice this amount. In favour- 
able years a pound of scales produces four or five 
pounds of wax. In the plain round Kiating very 
many plots of ground are seen edged with slumps 
from three or four to twelve feet high with numerous 
sprouta growing from their gnarled heads, as on 
pollard willows in our own country. The tree is 
probably Fraxinus Chinensis, a kind of ash. The 
leaves spring m pairs from the branches and are 
light green, ovat’, pointel, serrate and deciduous 
On the arrival of the scales in May they are 
made up in small packets of from twenty to thirty 
saalcs which are enclosed in a leaf of the wood 
oil tree, ilioe straw is used to suspend the packet 
under the branches of the ash or wax tree. 
Rough holes are drilled in the leaf with a blunt 
needle so that the inseets may find their way to 
the branches through the openings. The insects 
creep rapidly up to the leaves where they nestle 
for thirteen days. They then desoend to the 
branches and twigs and take up a position 
on ihem. The females then begin to de- 
velop scales on which to deposit their eggs, and 
the males to excrete the substance known as white 
wax. It first appears as an undercoating on the 
side of the boughs and twigs, looking like snow. 
It spreads gradually till in three months it is a 
quarter of an inch thick. In a hundred days the 
deposit is complete and the branches are lopped off. 
The wax is removed chiefly by hand and is placed in 
an iron pot of boiling water. The wax on rising 
to the surface is skimmed off, and deposited in a 
round mould. This is the white wax of commerce, 
it is used to coat the exterior of animal and 
vegetable tallow candles and to give greater con- 
sistency to the tallow. It is also used to size 
paper and cotton goods, to icapart a gloss to silk and 
as a furniture polish. From Hankow eaoh year at 
present about 16,000 piculs of white insect wax are 
exported in a year, and the main portion of it 
finds its way to that port from Szechuan. Chinkiang 
absorbs 1,000 piculs, and Shanghai 14,000 piculs. 
At Shanghai one half is for home use and the 
other half to distribute again to other ports. 
Tientsin requires 1,000 piculs, and Canton and 
Swatow a thousand piculs each. Thus it appears 
that while Szechuan is not the only producing 
centre of insect white wax it produces enough to 
furnish the most distant cities with the means to 
make a sufficient number of candles to maintain 
the temple worship as well as to enable the people 
everywhere to equip their lanterns for walking in 
the evening, and aid in night illumination generally. 
— xY.-C'. Herald. 
NOTES ON POPULAR SCIENCE. 
Bv Dn. .J. E, Taylou, F.L.S., P’.G.S., Ac., Editoi; 
or SoiEN’CE Gossip." 
A year or two ago 1 drew attention in one of iny 
letters to the discovery that the process of tauuiug 
could be acoeh rated by oUctrical currents. Tbis has 
now passed into the lagiou of commercial outarprisa 
aud is likely to be bigbly successful. Unlortuuately, 
