114 
HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. 
[Packard. 
labor or risk to the cultivator. The eggs of the insect which 
produces the wax are annually imported from the districts 
of Hochin or Hoking and Why-li-tzou in Yunnan (where 
the culture of the eggs forms a special occupation) by mer¬ 
chants who deal in nothing else but pa-la-tan, 4 white wax 
eggs.’ The egg clusters which were described to me as about 
the size of a pea are transported carefully packed in baskets 
of the leaves of the pa-la-shu, 4 white wax tree,’ which re¬ 
sembles a privet-shrub, and arrive in Szchuan in March, 
wdiere they are purchased at about twenty taels per basket. 
The trees by the middle of March have thrown out a number 
of long tender shoots and leaves, and then the clusters of 
eggs enclosed in balls of the young leaves are suspended to 
the shoots by strings. About the end of the month the larvae 
make their appearance, feed on the branches and leaves, and 
soon attain the size of a small caterpillar or rather a wingless 
house fly apparently covered with white down, with a delicate 
plume-like appendage, curving from the tail over the back. 
So numerous are they that, as seen by me in Yunnan, the 
branches of the trees are whitened by them, and appear as if 
covered with feathery snow. The grub proceeds in July to 
take the chrysalis form, burying itself in a white wax secre¬ 
tion, just as a silkworm wraps itself in its cocoon of silk. 
All the branches of the trees are thus completely coated 
with wax an inch thick, and in the beginning of August are 
lopped off close to the trunk and cut into small lengths 
which are tied up in bundles and carried to the boiling houses, 
where they are transferred without further preparation to 
large caldrons of water, and boiled until every particle of 
the waxy substance rises to the surface. The wax is 
skimmed off and run into moulds in which shape it is ex¬ 
ported to all parts of the empire. 
It would seem that the wax growers find that it does not 
pay them to reserve any of the insects for their reproductive 
state, and hence the necessity of importing the eggs from 
18 
