Category: Science - Biology
If we are struck with wonder and admiration at the progress of the arts and manufactures, and have daily reason to congratulate ourselves on the skill and ingenuity of our fellow-creatures, by which our comforts and conveniences are so much increased; it must also occasionally...
If we are struck with wonder and admiration at the progress of the arts and manufactures, and have daily reason to congratulate ourselves on the skill and ingenuity of our fello...
4. CHAPTER I.The most important of all the insect manufactures is doubtless that of silk-spinning. It seems almost past belief that the magnificent velvets, satins, and silks which form so e...
5. CHAPTER II.We now come to the most important of all silk-spinning insects, the common silkworm, or caterpillar of the mulberry-tree moth. The labours of this insect were known and apprecia...
6. CHAPTER III.Our history of the silk manufacture among insects would be incomplete without a notice of the labours of spiders. Not only do these insects produce filmy webs to entrap their pr...
7. CHAPTER IV.The most notable insect manufacturer, after the silkworm, is the common hive bee, which is able to produce three distinct substances, honey, wax, and silk; the first two only be...
8. CHAPTER V.Many and various are the trees, shrubs, and plants, yielding blossoms rich in honey, which have been recommended to be cultivated in the neighbourhood of bee-hives; and no one c...
9. CHAPTER VI.The cochineal insect is extremely valuable in commerce, as yielding a brilliant red dye, and we may with propriety class it among insect manufactures, because, although its dest...
10. CHAPTER VII.Another insect of the same family as the cochineal, prepares a substance called gum lac, which is used as a dye, and also as a varnish. This is the lac insect, (_coccus lacca_,)...
11. CHAPTER VIII.“No present that insects have made to the arts is equal in utility and universal interest, comes more home to our best affections, or is the instrument of producing more valuabl...
12. CHAPTER IX.Almost any article could be better spared from the materia medica, than an insect remedy called _cantharides_, or Spanish flies. This consists of the bodies of small beetles, in...