Part I. ] 
Stebbing : Note on the Lac Insect. 
67 
With the general use of chemically made aniline dyes the demand 
for the lac-dye decreased until it has now become an almost negligible 
quantity. The old methods of collection, however, still continue, with 
the result that the manufacturer has still to go through the whole process 
of removing the dye from the stick-lac before he can make any use of the 
latter, although the dye thus obtained is practically useless and 
worthless. This has naturally given rise to the question — Is it necessary 
that the lac should reach the manufactory still full of the lac-dye ? 
This question has received considerable attention of late and has 
now, I think, been settled by definite experiments and Dr. Hooper’s 
carefully made analyses. Analyses of larvae submitted in a living state 
to Dr. Hooper have shown that they themselves consist in the dried state 
of 48 per cent, of pure colouring matter after having lost 54 per cent, of 
water in the drying process. Acquaintance with the life histories of 
other similar scale insects in which, after the production of eggs, the 
mother dries up to a small piece of wrinkled skin naturally led one to 
infer that on the exit of the larvae the skin of the lac female would dry up 
and lose all its colouring properties. This, however, is unfortunately not 
the case. Two sets of samples of so-called phunki lac from which the 
larvae had issued were submitted to Dr. Hooper. The first had been 
plucked from the tree (in the Saharanpur District) before the larvae 
swarmed and was submitted to Dr. Hooper a couple of months after the 
larvae had swarmed out and died on and round the branches. The per- 
centage of dye was 3'5 per cent. The second set of branches were cut 
from the trees in Raipur by Mr. Lowri after the larvae had swarmed out 
of them on the trees. The percentage of dye still in the lac was found 
to be 1‘4. 
Mr. Hooper’s own experiments with branches of phunki lac gave the 
percentage of dye present at 3'6 (Nani Tal lac) and 1*8 (Kheri lac). 
The question to be decided therefore would seem to be whether since 
all the dye does not disappear with the swarming larvae, it would be any 
cheaper for the manufacturer, so far as the washing processes he has to put 
the lac through are concerned, to have the lac picked before or after the 
larvae have swarmed. It would seem probable that the saving in cost by 
picking after the larvae have swarmed, if any is possible owing to the 
lighter washing required, would be more than counterbalanced, so far as 
the lac cultivator is concerned by the greater risk of deterioration to 
which the lac is exposed during the extra period it must be left on tiie 
