Some other insects besides the Cocci afford dyes. Reaumur tells us, that in the Levant, Persia, and China, they use the galls of a particular species of Aphis for dyeing silk crimson, which he thinks might lead us to try experiments with those of our own country[619]. That dyes might be thus obtained seems probable from an observation of Linné's, in his Lapland Tour, upon the galls produced by Aphis Pini on the extremities of the leaves of the spruce-fir, which, he informs us, when arrived at maturity burst asunder, and discharge an orange-coloured powder which stains the clothes[620]; and Mr. Sheppard confirms this observation, the galls of this Aphis abounding upon fir-trees in his garden. In fact, we are told that Terminalia citrina, a tree common in India, yields a species of gall, the product of an insect, which is sold in every market, being one of the most useful dyeing drugs known to the natives, who dye their best and most durable yellow with it[621]. A species of mite (Trombidium tinctorium), a native of Guinea and Surinam, is also employed as a dye; and it would be worth while to try whether our T. holosericeum, so remarkable for the dazzling brilliancy of its crimson and the beautiful velvet texture of its down, which seems nearly related to T. tinctorium, would not also afford a valuable tincture. It is not likely, perhaps, that many better and cheaper dyes than we now possess can be obtained from insects; but Reaumur has suggested that water-colours of beautiful tints, not otherwise easily obtainable, might be procured from the excrements of the larvæ of the common clothes-moth, which retain the colour of the wool they have eaten unimpaired in its lustre, and mix very well with water. To get a fine red, yellow, blue, green, or any other colour or shade of colour, we should merely have to feed our larvæ with cloth of that tint[622].
Wax, so valuable for many minor purposes, and deemed with us so indispensable to the comfort of the great, is of still more importance in those parts of Europe and America in which it forms a considerable branch of trade and manufacture, as an article of extensive use in the religious ceremonies of the inhabitants. Humboldt informs us, that not fewer than 25,000 arrobas, value upwards of 83,000l., are annually exported from Cuba to New Spain, where the quantity consumed in the festivals of the Church is immense even in the smallest villages; and that the total export of the same island in 1803 was not less than 42,670 arrobas, worth upwards of 130,000l.[623] Nearly the whole of the wax employed in Europe, and by far the greater part of that consumed in America, is the produce of the common hive-bee; but in the latter quarter of the globe a quantity by no means trifling is obtained from various wild species. According to Don F. de Azara, the inhabitants of Santiago del Estero gather every year not less than 14,000 pounds of a whitish wax from the trees of Chaco[624].
In China wax is also produced by another insect, which from the description of it by the Abbé Grosier seems to be a species of Coccus. With this insect the Chinese stock the two kinds of tree (Kan-la-chu and Choni-la-chu) on which alone it is found, and which always afterwards retain it. Towards the beginning of winter small tumours are perceived, which increase until as big as a walnut. These are the nests (abdomens of the females) filled with the eggs that are to give birth to the Cocci, which when hatched disperse themselves over the leaves, and perforate the bark under which they retire. The wax (called Pe-la, white wax, because so by nature,) begins to appear about the middle of June. At first a few filaments like fine soft wool are perceived, rising from the bark round the body of the insect, and these increase more and more until the gathering, which takes place before the first hoar frosts in September. The wax is carried to court, and reserved for the emperor, the princes, and chief mandarins. If an ounce of it be added to a pound of oil, it forms a wax little inferior to that made by bees. The physicians employ it in several diseases; and the Chinese, when about to speak in public and assurance is necessary, previously eat an ounce of it to prevent swoonings[625]; a use of it for which happily our less diffident orators have no call. This account is in the main confirmed by Geomelli Careri, except that he calls the wax-insect a worm which bores to the pith of certain trees; and says that it produces a sufficient supply for the whole empire, the different provinces of which are furnished from Xantung, where it is bred in the greatest perfection, with a stock of eggs[626]. A very different origin, however, is assigned to the Pe-la by Sir George Staunton, who informs us that it is produced by a species of Cicada (Flata limbata), which in its larva state feeds upon a plant like the privet, strewing upon the stem a powder, which when collected forms the wax[627]. But as he merely states that this powder was "supposed" to form it, and does not himself appear to have made the experiment of dissolving it in oil, it is most probable that his information was incorrect, and that Grosier's statement is the true one.
This probability is nearly converted into certainty by the fact that many Aphides and Cocci secrete a wax-like substance, and that a kind of wax very analogous to the Pe-la, and of the same class with bees-wax, only containing more carbon, is actually produced in India by a nondescript species of Coccus remarkable for providing itself with a small quantity of honey like our bees. This substance, for specimens of which I am indebted to the kindness of Sir Joseph Banks, was first noticed by Dr. Anderson, and called by him white-lac. It could be obtained in any quantity from the neighbourhood of Madras, and at a much cheaper rate than bees-wax: but the experiments of Dr. Pearson do not afford much ground for supposing that it can be advantageously employed in making candles[628]. De Azara speaks of a firm white wax apparently similar, and the produce of an insect of the same tribe, which is collected in South America in the form of pearl-like globules from the small branches of the Quabirâmý, a small shrub two or three feet high[629].
Insects in some countries not only furnish the natives with wax but with resin, which is used instead of tar for their ships. Molina informs us that, at Coquimbo in Chili, resin, either the product of an insect or the consequence of an insect's biting off the buds of a particular species of Origanum, is collected in large quantities. The insect in question is a small smooth red caterpillar about half an inch long, which changes into a yellowish moth with black stripes upon the wings (Phal. ceraria, Molina). Early in the spring vast numbers of these caterpillars collect on the branches of the Chila, where they form their cells of a kind of soft white wax or resin, in which they undergo their transformations. This wax, which is at first very white, but by degrees becomes yellow and finally brown, is collected in autumn by the inhabitants, who boil it in water, and make it up into little cakes for market[630].
Honey, another well-known product of insects, has lost much of its importance since the discovery of sugar; yet at the present day, whether considered as a delicious article of food, or the base of a wholesome vinous beverage of home manufacture, it is of no mean value even in this country; and in many inland parts of Europe, where its saccharine substitute is much dearer than with us, few articles of rural economy, not of primary importance, would be dispensed with more reluctantly. In the Ukraine some of the peasants have 4 or 500 bee-hives, and make more profit of their bees than of corn[631]; and in Spain the number of bee-hives is said to be incredible; a single parish priest was known to possess 5000[632].
The domesticated or hive-bee, to which we are indebted for this article, is the same according to Latreille in every part of Europe, except in some districts of Italy, where a different species (Apis ligustica of Spinola) is kept—the same probably that is cultivated in the Morea and the isles of the Archipelago[633]. Honey is obtained, however, from many other species both wild and domestic. What is called rock honey in some parts of America, which is as clear as water and very thin, is the produce of wild bees, which suspend their clusters of thirty or forty waxen cells, resembling a bunch of grapes, to a rock[634]: and in South America large quantities are collected from the nests built in trees by Trigona Amalthea, and other species of this genus recently separated from Apis[635]; under which probably should be included the Bamburos, whose honey, honest Robert Knox informs us, whole towns in Ceylon go into the woods to gather[636]. According to Azara, one of the chief articles of food of the Indians who live in the woods of Paraguay is wild honey[637]. Captain Green observes that, in the island of Bourbon, where he was stationed for some time, there is a bee which produces a kind of honey much esteemed there. It is quite of a green colour, of the consistency of oil, and to the usual sweetness of honey superadds a certain fragrance. It is called green honey, and is exported to India, where it bears a high price[638]. One of the species that has probably been attended to ages before our hive-bee, is Apis fasciata of Latreille, a kind so extensively cultivated in Egypt, that Niebuhr states he fell in upon the Nile, between Cairo and Damietta, with a convoy of 4000 hives, which were transporting from a region where the season for flowers had passed, to one where the spring was later[639]. Columella says that the Greeks in like manner sent their bee-hives every year from Achaia into Attica; and a similar custom is not unknown in Italy, and even in this country in the neighbourhood of heaths. In Madagascar, according to Latreille, the inhabitants have domesticated Apis unicolor; A. indica is cultivated in India at Pondicherry and in Bengal; A. Adansonii, Latr. at Senegal[640]; and Fabricius thinks that A. acraensis (Centris, Syst. Piez.) laboriosa, and others in the East and West Indies, might be domesticated with greater advantage than even A. mellifica[641].
The last, and doubtless the most valuable, product of insects to which I have to advert is Silk. To estimate justly the importance of this article, it is not sufficient to view it as an appendage of luxury unrivalled for richness, lustre, and beauty; and without which courts would lose half their splendour. We must consider it, what it actually is, as the staple article of cultivation in many large provinces in the South of Europe, amongst the inhabitants of which the prospect of a deficient crop causes as great alarm as a scanty harvest of grain with us; and after giving employment to tens of thousands in its first production and transportation, as furnishing subsistence to hundreds of thousands more in its final manufacture; and thus becoming one of the most important wheels that give circulation to national wealth.
But we must not confine our view to Europe. When silk was so scarce in this country, that James the First, while king of Scotland, was forced to beg of the Earl of Mar the loan of a pair of silk stockings to appear in before the English ambassador, enforcing his request with the cogent appeal, "For ye would not, sure, that your king should appear as a scrub before strangers—" Nay, long before this period, even prior to the time that silk was valued at its weight of gold at Rome, and the Emperor Aurelian refused his empress a robe of silk because of its dearness—the Chinese peasantry in some of the provinces, millions in number, were clothed with this material; and for some thousand years to the present time, it has been both there and in India, (where a class whose occupation was to attend silk-worms appears to have existed from time immemorial, being mentioned in the oldest Sanscrit books[642],) one of the chief objects of cultivation and manufacture. You will admit, therefore, that when nature