XXI. Observations and experiments on a wax-like substance, resembling the Pé-la of the Chinese, collected at Madras by Dr. Anderson, and called by him white lac

Abstract

I. Some Observations relative to the natural History of the insect which secretes a Sort of wax, called white Lac. The matter which is the subject of the following observations and experiments, was first noticed by Dr. Anderson of Madras, about the year 1786, in a letter to the governor and council of that place, when he says, nests of insects resembling small cowry shells were brought to him from the woods by the natives, who eat them with avidity. These supposed nests he shortly afterwards discovered to be the coverings of the females of an undescribed species of coccus; and having noticed, in the Abbé Grosier's Account of China, that the Chinese collect a kind of wax, much esteemed by them, under the name of Pé-la, from a coccus deposited for the purpose of breeding on certain shrubs, and managed exactly in the same manner as the Mexicans manage the cochineal insect, he followed the same process with his new insects, and shortly found means to propagate them with great facility on several of the trees and shrubs growing in his neighbourhood. On examining the substance, he observed in it a very considerable resemblance to bees wax; and noticed, moreover, that the animal which secretes it provides itself, by some means or other, with a small quantity of honey, resembling that produced by our bees; and he complains in one of his letters, that the children whom he employed to gather it were tempted by its sweetness to eat so much of what they collected, as to diminish materially the produce of his crop. It is also believed that the white lac possesses medicinal qualities.