'l'ho following list, although necessarily incom plete, will give an idea of the families and genera occurring in Southern India. It is based on Sir J. E. Tennent's list of Ceylon insects:— Some insects are useful to man and his indust ries, but some are hurtful, even ruinous ; some are of wonderful beauty, and others are of interest from peculiarity of structure or of habits. They are gifted with such senses as love, touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing, and the commanding and governing senses, and in this state the two sexes meet and the propagation of their kind is effected. After impregnating, the males usually die. The females live a short space longer, until they lay their eggs. Their fecundity is generally very great, but their numbers are kept under by many insectivorous creatures,—amongst birds by wood peckers, by the Sittinm or nuthatches, by Certhias or true creepers, and by the Parrince or titmice. The hard-bodied beetles and other Coleoptera are eagerly seized while on the wing by the shrikes, drongas, crows, rollers, bee-eaters, thrushes, and others. Many bats, carnaria, and civets are insect feeders. The ants, the acari, and ichneu monide, among insects, destroy caterpillars and grubs, and some of the ichneumons destroy the larvae of many species of gall-flies. Genera of the family Mordellidm are mostly parasites of the Hymenoptera. They abound in tropical climates, and check the increase of the Vespidm (wasps), and Bombidm (bees). The lizards, the chameleons, and the geckos eat up great nmnbers of the Achetidm (crickets), and the little chip-lak lizard of all India is unceasing in making them its prey.
Very few insects are edible, and from their small size they add little to the food supplies of man. The Greeks ate grasshoppers ; oven now the aborigines of New South Wales eat them raw, first taking off their wings. Allan relates of an Indian king, who for a dessert, instead of fruit, set before his guests a roasted worm taken from a plant (probably the larva of an insect), which was thought very delicious. Mites in myriads are consumed in cheese. Negroes in Jamaica cat the Bugong butterflies, after removing the wings, and they store them up by pounding and smoking them.
The Chinese, it is said, thriftily eat the chrysalis of the silkworm, after making use of the silk ; the larvae of a hawk-moth are also relished.
The Palolo viridis or sea-worm, and the grub of the Cordylia palmarum or palm-weevil, are used as food articles. The grub of the palm-weevil is the size of a thumb, and is a favourite with some races of India. The palm-weevil of Burma, quite a large insect, is, according to Dr. Mason, a species of Calandra. Its larva is an odious-looking grub, which is eaten by the Burmese, and esteemed by them a great luxury.
The grub of a species of Cicada of the Homoptera is eaten by the Karens as a great luxury. It is domiciled in a clay tube several inches high, from which the Karens extract it by a thorny branch of a bamboo.
Humboldt mentions ants as being eaten by the Marivitunos and Margueratares, but he does not specify the genus or species. Hottentots and races in the East Indies eat the termites, or white ants, boiled, fried, and raw. Broughton, in his Letters written in a Mahratta camp in 1809, tells us that they were carefully sought after, and preserved for the use of the debilitated Lurjee Rao, prime' minister of Sindia. They are delicate eating.
The natives mix them with flour, and make a variety of pastry ; or they parch them• in pots over a gentle fire, with or without ghi, stirring them about as is done in roasting coffee. White ants, at their season of pairing, about the com mencement of the rains, take wing, and pour into houses that are lighted up. They almost instantly cast their wings, and are then mere creeping insects, easily caught.
The peasants of Languedoc hold the Mantis religiosa almost sacred ; they call it Prega Deori or Prie Dieu.
For man and his industriesinsects furnish many valuable materials. Galls are employed in dyeing and in tanning and ink-making, and are also used medicinally. They are produced on different species of oak, one of them by the female of the Cynips or Diplolepis piercing the buds of Quercus infectoria, and, it is said, also of Q. ballots; another gall, also, on the tamarisk, Tamarix Indiea, is largely gathered on the N.W. borders of India, in Central Asia, and Kurdistan. In China, a gall, which is said to be produced by an aphis, is more bulky than the oak galls, and of very irregular shape, and hollow.
The cochineal insect, the Coccus cacti, is of great value in the arts. There are two species, one yielding the fine cochineal of commerce, the other the Grana sylvestris or wild cochineal. The latter is naturalized in India, but it is of little commercial value, being enveloped in a thick cottony down, which cannot be separated from the insect for the preparation of the dye. The fine cochineal insect lives on several cultivated kinds of thornless Opuntia, and 0. cochinilifera, which is employed in the W. Indies for rearing the insect, bas been introduced into India. The fine insect will not settle on time wild prickly pear, 0. Dillenii. The females alone yield the dye. The young are viviparous ; every neal mother produces above a hundred young ones. Whilst within the mother they appear to be all connected, one after the other, by an umbilical cord to a common placenta, and in this order they are, in due time, brought forth as living animals, after breaking the membrane in which they were at first probably contained as eggs. The fine cochineal. the Gram fina, is brouglot, to Europe chiefly from Central America, and sells in England at 3s. Gd. It yields a valuable red, crimson, scarlet dye for wool and silk, and col ouring material. The best rouge is _made from it, and its imports into Britain in 1881 were valued at 2355,924.' Another species of Coccus, C. maniparus of Arabia, punctures the Tamarix gallica, and causes the exudation of the Arabian manna. But, in India, the most valuable of the species of Coccus is C. laces, the female of which becomes the lac of commerce. It is a product of British India, and in the year 1877-78 the exports were,— Shell-lac, . . . . 78,875 cwt. Rs. 28,50,552 Button lac 17,114 „ „ 5,46,061 Stick-lac, . . . 1,393 „ „ 15,807 Lac dye, 9,570 „ „ 2,90,087 Other kinds, . 14,807 „ „ 4,64,035 This forest product varies in quantity from year to year.