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Chinese White Wax: a Curious Industry.—George F. Smithers, consul at Chung-king, China, is authority for the following: In the Chien-ch'ang Valley, and especially in the neighborhood of Chung-king, which is the chief wax-producing country, perhaps the most prominent tree is the Ligustrum lucidum, or "insect tree." It is an evergreen, with dark-green, glossy, ovate leaves springing in pairs from the branches. On these trees, attached to the bark, are numerous brown, pea-shaped excrescences. The larger of these scales are readily detachable, and when opened present either a whitish-brown pulpy mass, or a crowd of minute animals looking like a mass of flour. Upon close examination these masses are found to consist of a swarm of brown or dirty-white creatures, each provided with six legs and a pair of antennae. This is the white wax insect, the Coccus pe-la of Westwood. Many of the scales also contain either a small white bag or cocoon covering a pupa, or a perfect imago in the shape of a small black beetle. This beetle is a species of Brachytarsus. If left undisturbed in the broken scale, the beetle, which from his ungainly appearance is called by the Chinese nin-êrh (buffalo), will continue to burrow in the inner lining of the scale, which is apparently his food. The Chinese declare that the beetle eats his minute companions in the scale. When a scale is plucked from a tree, an orifice where it was attached to the bark is disclosed. By this orifice the cocci are enabled to escape from the detached scales. Two hundred miles to the northeast of Chien-ch'ang, and separated from it by a series of mountain ranges, is the prefecture of Chia-ting, within which insect white wax as an article of commerce is produced. At the end of April the scales are gathered from the trees, made up into paper packets, each weighing about sixteen ounces, and transported by porters across the mountains to Chia-ting. Great care has to be taken in the transit of the scales. The porters travel only during the night, as the high temperature during the day would cause a too rapid development of the insects and their escape from the scales. Notwithstanding the greatest precautions, however, each packet loses about an ounce in transit. West from the right bank of the Min River, on which the city of Chia-ting lies, stretches a plain to the foot of the sacred O-mei range of mountains. This plain is an immense rice field, being well watered by streams from the western mountains. Almost every plot of ground here, as well as the bases of the mountains, are thickly edged with stumps, varying from two or four to a dozen feet in height, with numerous sprouts rising from their gnarled heads. These stumps resemble at a distance our own pollard willows. The leaves spring in pairs from the branches; they are light green, ovate, serrated, and
