35 Γ consolidate the dye. Thence it is run off | chiefly for the purpose of collecting infor. W. S. From Nature. A PARLIAMENTARY paper which has "Insect tree" is the name given by the Chinese in the extreme west of Sze-chu'an to what is probably the Ligustrum lucidum of botanists. The point will doubtless be decided at Kew by the specimens which Mr. Hosie has sent home. It is also called the winter-green or evergreen tree; while in the east of the province it is known as the "crackling flea tree," owing, it is said, to the sputtering of the wood when burned. It is an evergreen, with leaves which spring in pairs from the branches. They are thick, dark green, glossy, ovate, and pointed. In the end of May or beginning of June the tree bears clusters of small white flowers, which give place to small seeds of a dark blue color. In the month of May, 1883, Mr. Hosie found attached to the bark of the boughs and twigs numerous brown, pea-shaped excrescences or galls, in various stages of development. In the earlier stages they looked like minute univalves clinging to the bark. The larger galls were readily detachable, and, when opened, presented either a whitey-brown, pulpy mass, or a crowd of minute animals, whose movements were only just perceptible to the naked eye. Last year an opportunity of examining these galls and their contents with some minuteness in the chief waxproducing locality in the province presented itself. They are very brittle, and there was found, on opening them, a swarm of brown creatures, like minute lice, each with six legs and a pair of club antennæ, crawling about. The great majority of the galls also contained either a small white bag or cocoon, containing a chrysalis, whose movements were visible through the thin covering, or a small black beetle. This beetle also has six legs, and is pro vided with a long proboscis, armed with a pair of pincers. It is called by the Chinese the "buffalo," probably from its ungainly appearance. After a few days it turned out that each chrysalis developed into a black beetle, or “buffalo." If left undisturbed in the broken gall, the beetle will, heedless of the wax insects, which begin to crawl outside and inside the gall, continue to burrow with his proboscis and | the wood-oil tree, the edges of which are pincers in the inner lining of the gall, fastened together with rice straw. These which is apparently his food. The Chi- small packets are then suspended close to nese believe that he eats his minute companions in the gall, or at any rate injures them with the pressure of his heavy body, and galls in which beetles are numerous sell cheaper than others. But careful in vestigation showed that the beetle does not eat the other insects, and that his purpose within the gall is a more useful one. When a gall is plucked from the insect tree an orifice is disclosed where it was attached to the bark. By this the wax insects escape. But if the gall remained attached to the tree no mode of escape would appear to be provided for them. The beetle provides this mode. With his pincers he gradually bores a hole in the covering of the gall, which is of sufficient size to allow him to escape from his imprisonment, and which allows egress at the same time to the wax insects. When the beetles were removed from the galls some of them made efforts to fly; but at that time their elytræ were not sufficiently developed, and they had to content themselves with crawling, a movement which, owing to the long proboscis, they performed very clumsily. Through the orifice thus created by the beetle the insects escape to the branches of the tree, if the gall be not plucked soon enough. When plucked, the galls are carried in headlong flight by bearers who travel through the night for coolness to the market towns, and every endeavor is made to preserve a cool temperature in order that the heat may not force the insects to escape from the galls during the journey. the branches under which they hang. A few rough holes are made in the leaf by means of a large needle, so that the insects may find their way through them to the branches. On emerging from the galls the insects creep rapidly up the branches to the leaves, where they remain for thirteen days, until their mouths and limbs are strong. During this period they are said to moult, casting off "a hairy gar ment," which has grown in this short time. They then descend to the tender branches, on the under sides of which they fix themselves to the bark by their mouths. Gradually the upper surfaces of the branches are also dotted with the insects. They are said not to move from the spots to which they attach themselves. The Chinese idea is that they live on dew, and that the wax perspires from the bodies of the insects. The specimens of the branches encrusted with wax show that the insects construct a series of galleries stretching from the bark to the outer surface of the wax. At an early stage of wax production an insect called by the Chinese the "wax-dog" is developed. Mr. Hosie was unable to obtain a specimen of this insect, but it was described to him as a caterpillar, in size and appearance like a brown bean. His theory (which, he confesses, is unsupported by outside evidence) is that the female of the "buffalo" beetle, already mentioned, deposits eggs on the boughs of the insect tree or the wax-tree, as the case may be, and that the waxdog is the offspring of the buffalo. There may possibly be a connection between this caterpillar and the gall containing the wax insects. It is said that during the night and early morning the insects relax their hold of the bark, and that during the heat of the day they again take firm hold of it. The owners of trees are in the habit, during the first month, of belaboring the trees with thick clubs to shake off the wax-dog, which, they assert, de. stroys the wax insects. After this period the branches are coated with wax, and the wax-dog is consequently unable to reach his prey. The first appearance of wax in the boughs and twigs has been likened to a coating of sulphate of quinine. This gradually becomes thicker, until, after a period of from ninety to a bun The wax insects are transferred to these dred days, the wax in good years has at trees about the beginning of May. They tained a thickness of about a quarter of are made into small packets of twenty or an inch. When the wax is ready, the thirty galls, which are inclosed in a leaf of | branches are lopped off, and as much of The wax-tree is usually a stump, varying from three or four to a dozen feet in height, with numerous sprouts or branches rising from the gnarled top of the stem. The leaves spring in pairs from the branches. They are light green, ovate, pointed, serrated, and deciduous. The branches are rarely found more than six feet in length, as those on which the wax is produced are cut from the stems with it. The sprouts of one and two years' growth are too pliant, and it is only in the third year, when they are again sufficiently strong to resist the wind, that wax insects are placed on them. In June some of the trees bear bunches apparently of seeds in small pods, and specimens of these have been sent to Kew. the wax as possible is removed by hand. | Chinese literature makes it difficult to This is placed in an iron pot with water, collect true information on many points. and the wax, rising to the surface at melt- We know they understood the art of glaz ing-point, is skimmed off and placed in ing pottery at a very early date, and on round moulds, whence it emerges as the this account were possibly more careless white wax of commerce. The wax which about glassmaking. Porcelain was incannot be removed by hand is placed with vented, it is supposed, about 185 B.C.; the the twigs in a pot with water, and the same writing on the bottles found in tombs was process is gone through. This latter is used in the century before our era. The less white and of an inferior quality. But martyr god of porcelain was a potter who the Chinese, with their usual carefulness threw himself into the furnace one day, that nothing be lost or wasted, take the when from want of fuel the failing fire insects, which have meantime sunk to the would have spoiled the contents of the bottom of the pot, and, placing them in a kiln — -an unexampled instance of devobag, squeeze them until they have given tion to his art. The celebrated patra up the last drop of the wax. They finish or alms-bowl of Buddha is alluded to their short, industrious existence by being by a Chinese writer of 1350, quoted by thrown to the pigs. The market price of Mr. Nesbitt: "In front of the image of the wax is about Is. 6d. per pound. It is Buddha is a sacred bowl, which is made used chiefly in the manufacture of candles. neither of copper nor iron; it is of a It melts at 160° F., while tallow melts at purple color and glossy, and when struck about 95°. In Sze-chu’an it is mixed with it sounds like glass." This bowl may tallow to give the latter greater consist- have been brought from the West to ency, and candles, when made, are dipped Ceylon, but it proves an acquaintance in melted white wax to give them a harder with glass on the part of the Chinese sheathing and to prevent the tallow from writer. A Portuguese traveller in China, running over when they are lighted. G. da Cruz, writing to Sebastian, king of Portugal, about 1560, says at a banquet given by a very rich merchant "the house was built with a loft and very faire, with many faire windows and casements, and all of it was a mirror;" what the mirrors were made of he does not explain, nor if the casements were filled with glass, but this is one of the earliest notices concerning life in China, as the Arab El-Edrisi, 1154, does not seem to have been himself in China; he says "Djan-kou is a celebrated city, the Chinese glass is made there." Djan-kou has not been satisfactorily identified with any existing city, but the passage shows that Chinese glass was supposed to exist. M. Labarte thinks it probable that fine porcelain and not glass is really meant by El-Edrisi, but an Arab of the twelfth century is unlikely to have made any confusion between the two substances, with which he must have been perfectly familiar. Mr. Nesbitt, who has collected together many allusions to glass in the writings of the early Jesuit missionaries, says the words po-li were in use for a glass at a very early time. Nearly all French writers on glass allude to the tale of a piece of crystal being taken in China for the real material of which heaven is made. The original narrator of this account is Father Ricci, who left Europe 1583 A.D. and spent some years in China; he states that he gave a prism of glass to a native convert, one Chuitaso, who put it into a silver case with gold From The Pottery Gazette. GLASS IN CHINA AND JAPAN. THE extreme antiquity of civilization in China is proved (if proof be wanted) by the fact that parts of the "Shoo-King" were undoubtedly written more than 2,000 years B.C., when the Chinese were already acquainted with writing. In these books are allusions to glass, which yield unmistakable evidence of its antiquity. Thus we find it stated that the emperor Shun, on receiving the crown from Yaou, who abdicated 2145 B.C., "examined the gem-adorned turning-sphere and the gem transverse tube, that he might regulate the seven directors, or regularly governed bodies." The writer of this must have had some constructed instrument connected with astronomy in his mind's eye. The "Shoo-King" is full of evidences of a very high state of civilization in China; thus in one book we are told the wild tribes brought tribute of oyster pearls and strings of pearls not quite round, to Yu, 2004 B.C. If the Chinese understood glass-making they would soon begin to copy these pearls; and we find under Ou-ti, about 140 B.C., a manufactory where false pearls were made of licou-li, a species of glass made from an herb, probably fern. Our great ignorance of ancient chains, and "adorned it further with a lif put into a maatsubo bottle. They are writing that it was a fragment of that mat- found by divers sticking to the rocks of ter whereof the heavens consist. One the submerged island of Mauri, near Forwas said to offer him five hundred pieces of gold soon after for it, which till Father Matthew had presented his to the king he would not sell; after that he set a higher price, and sold it." We may suppose from this that colorless brilliant glass was unknown to the Chinese. The Russian ambassador, E. Ides, who went to China, 1693, says he was taken by command of the emperor to see various sights, among them some "jugglers, who, after many other diverting tricks, played with round balls of glass as large as a man's head at the point of a sharp stick, tossing them several ways without breaking them or letting fall, so it was really surprising." He was also taken through the markets and to various shops, especially a toyshop; the owner had a fine garden, and among other things showed him "a large globe full of fish about a finger long, whose scales appeared as if made of gold, but when the scales fell off they were a beautiful crimson." Japan has so long been a sealed book to us that it is nearly impossible to find any information as to glass made there. Captain John Saris, who sailed 1605 ("Purchas's Pilgrimmes "), advises that merchants should take to Japan "drinking glasses of all sorts, cans and cups, beer glasses, gilt beakers, and looking glasses of the largest sorts." This would lead us to infer that those articles were not made in the country. Kaempfer, who published his history of Japan in 1727, does not mention glass beyond that required for glazing the porcelain, which he describes as most prized when nearly transparent. The labor required to achieve this transparence was so great as to give birth to the old saying "that human bones are kneaded into China ware." He gives a singular account of some very curious ancient tea-bottles called maatsubo (best of vessels); they are shaped like small barrels with a short neck, are transparent, very thin, and of a white color tinged with green. The Japanese believe they give a high flavor to tea kept in them, and assert that old tea recovers its virtue mosa. The bottles must be taken off with great care for fear of breaking them; they are much disfigured by shells, coral, and submarine substances growing on them, which are never quite scraped off, as proof of the genuineness of the article. Merchants give high prices for broken ones, which they mend beautifully. No one dares to purchase the whole bottles found; they are reserved for the emperor's treasury, who has inherited from ancestors so many as would amount to a large sum of money if sold. The island of Mauri is supposed to have been submerged by the anger of the gods; some scoffers having painted the faces of the idols red, no one escaped save the Prince Peiruun and his family, who reached China, where the day of their arrival is still kept as a festival- the people row about in boats, and call on "Peiruun." Much interest was excited a few years ago by an account of the exhibition of many antique articles at Nara, the ancient capital of the mikados of Japan, near Kioto, the present capital. Mr. Campbell describes this exhibition. It is supposed that each mikado had put aside some important treasure and dated it, before the removal of the government at the end of the eighth century to Kioto, where it has remained ever since. Among these treassures is a glass ewer about a foot high, which is entered in the original list of the articles deposited in the sort of barn where they have been preserved. As no certain knowledge: of glass-making in Japan exists, it has been suggested that this ewer was imported either from China or by Arabs before the eighth century, and being considered a curiosity was depos ited among the treasures. It is possible that before long some Japanese writer may be enabled to throw some light on the whole subject of glass in his native country. A recent traveller describes a very curious vitreous sponge with threads which seem as if composed of spun glass, found on the eastern coast of Japan. M. A. WALLACE-DUNLOP. 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