INSECTS AND MAN. 
35 
Insects and Man. —With the exception of domestic animals there 
is no single group of animal life which enters more into the daily life of 
man than insects. They live on us and around us ; in our food, our 
clothes, our furniture, our houses ; we eat them or their products, we 
collect them and even sew them on our clothing. All people eat 
honey, use bees-wax, clothe themselves in silk, and there is no one who 
has not, at one time or another, been dependent upon some member 
of the insect world. The luxury of the present age of civilised peoples 
has brought into being industries connected solely with the collection 
of the more beautiful and striking forms, which are worked up into 
wall ornaments, paper weights, etc., and form a part of the art of this 
age. (Witness the advertisement in the Studio “ Artistic Cases of 
Tropical Butterflies, exquisite colours and designs, supplied to many 
Art Schools, etc. 35 ) Man is, therefore, dependent on the insect world for 
so much, and though science may devise substitutes for the products 
derived from insects, some of them at least will never replace the 
genuine thing. No artificial honey will ever compare with the honey 
gathered by bees from thousands of flowers, fragrant of thyme or 
heather or logwood, though in this commercial age, chemically-prepared 
substitutes, composed of glucose and coal tar flavourings, are sold and 
accepted as genuine-; no substitute for bees-wax has been found, nor 
for shellac. It is likely that silk, as a commercial article among 
commercial nations, will be partly replaced by artificial substitutes, 
because the greatest value of true silk—durability—is of no value to an 
advanced civilisation which does not require to be clothed but costumed. 
Lac dye has been replaced by aniline, and though cochineal still holds 
its own for food colouring to some extent, it is probable that no insect- 
made dye will continue to hold its own against aniline dyes. 
These are the useful insects ; there are many that affect man in other 
ways. Why is it that almost every dry form of food sold and dealt in 
by commerce must be placed in a sealed package ? Why are millions 
of tins used yearly in a single city ? Why do we pay at least a fourth 
again of the value of biscuits, simply because of the tin 1 Very largely 
because of the ubiquitous insect, who would get in and eat them, if these 
things were not thus protected. Let any house-keeper in India think for 
a moment of her store-room and the precautions she takes. Sugar must 
