4 
Indian Forest Records. 
[ VoL. I. 
At the beginning of the century the exports of lac- dye from India 
were five to six times more valuable than those of the resin. As showing 
the progress of the export industry and the growing demand for shellac 
and decrease in utility of lac-dye between 1868 and 1900 the value of the 
exports of the former increased from Rs. 18,41,491 to Rs. 92,65,600, 
whilst that of the latter decreased from Rs. 4,45,612 to nil. 
CHAPTER IV. 
THE LAC INSECT 
I. Classification. 
Classification. 
Order — Hemiptera. 
The lac insect belongs to the great order of insects known as the 
Hemiptera or Bugs, Plant lice and^Scale insects. 
The most important characteristic of the 
members of this order is that the insects are 
furnished with mouth parts in the form of a piercing and sucking beak or 
proboscis. The greater number feed upon the sap of plants, piercing 
through the outer layers of the stem and bm’ving the proboscis in the 
succulent sappy layers beneath. The lac insect belongs to the family 
Coccidce or scale insects, as they are commonly 
known. 
Family — Coccidae. 
2. Position amongst Scale Insects. 
The Coccidce may be roughly divided according to the mode of life 
Position amongst scale of the species into two great groups : 
insects. 
(а) Those insects which move about during the whole of their life 
and do not form ‘ scales 
(б) Those insects which, although active during a portion of the 
young or larval stage of their existence, sooner or later come to rest 
on the food plant, bury their proboscis in the succu’ent inner bark 
of the twigs of the plant and gradually build up by excretions a covering 
or ‘ scale ’ round themselves, which may eventually completely enclose 
the insect. 
It is with the second of these two divisions that we are concerned 
here. 
