Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 176, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1918 — INSECT PRODUCTS OF VALUE [ARTICLE]

INSECT PRODUCTS OF VALUE

Many Small Creatures Make Contributions to the Country’s Wealth of No Insignificant Amount. We have many insect products of no small value. Most familiar are honey and wax from the bee. There is also a Chinese bug which secretes a kind of grease on various trees. This hardens ihto wax, and is collected, melted and purified, when it becomes white and glossy in appearance, and when mixed with oil can be made Into candles. The cochineal, a scale insect living on cacti in the American tropics, besides having medicinal qualities, yields the two dyes called carmine and lake. While nowadays most dyes are chemically made, the natural dye of the cochineal is employed in coloring soldiers’ uniforms, as it stands the weather better than commercial dyes. The pupae of a Mexican black fly which swarms in great quantities near Lake Texcpa are used as fertilizer. No enlargement is needed on the work of the precious silkworm—a native of 'China which is now raised here also. Commercial shellac is obtained by melting lac, the resinous substance produced by an East Indian scale insect and deposited in a crust on twigs to contain the insect and its eggs. The export value of lac from Indian ports in one year has risen as high as 33,000,000 rupees. Lac has also been used to make dyes, but while the lac industry is a growing one, the employment of lac in making dyes nas probably had its day. The best lac is obtained from Bengal and the central province of India. It is also used as stiffening for hats, sealing wax, as an ingredient of lithographic ink, in electrical work and in the manufacture of gramophone records.