quite transparent. The female is globular in form, and dark reddish brown in color. The flattened-out inner-bodies are almost oval in shape, and have a large hollow space wide enough to protect many thousand eggs. If the insect is removed from the stem, the eggs fall freely off. The female begins to lay eggs about May 1, and the young larvæ commence to hatch out the beginning of June. The larvæ crawl about over every branch, and, after molting, pass to the second stage of growth.

In the latter part of August the male larvæ of the second stage are completely imprisoned within an oval cocoon, formed by snowy white filaments, secreted by the dermal glands. Usually large numbers of the oval, flattened cocoons completely surround the stems and branches. A few days after remaining in this state, the winged insect appears through a slit-like opening at the free edge of the cocoon. The females go through the same

stages of molting, and vary but slightly in structure and size from the male. The males appear about the last of Septemberor beginning of October, and flit around the young females, who are already attached to the stems and branches.

The tree which produces the white wax insect is grown in the Chien-Chang valley in the western part of China, which is some 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. In March, round, brown forms are seen attached to the limbs and branches. If one of these should be opened, it would be found to contain innumerable white insects. By a strange law, the insect will not flourish or produce wax in its birthplace, and, if allowed to remain, will drop off in a dead mass. The Chinese, with clever instinct, have discovered the exact locality where they will flourish to the best advantage, and have started breeding the insect and cultivating the particular food plant upon which it thrives and deposits the wax-making cocoons. Transporting the females to the various farming places some two to four hundred miles distant in the Province of Sze-Chuan, gives employment during the season to thousands of por

ters.

One of these wax-making centers is Kia-Ting. Kia-Ting. About the first of May the female is nearly grown, and the body is almost conical, with a round base. Later on it becomes mature, and begins to de

posit eggs. At this time the operation of removing the females from the limbs and branches to which they are attached, and of getting them ready to turn over to the porter for transit, is commenced. They are thereafter carried hundreds of miles away, to where the wax-farmers

DISC OF INSECT-MADE WHITE WAX; ALSO TEMPLE CANDLES MADE FROM SAME MATERIAL.

have rows of the special food plant, a species of flowering ash five or six feet high, upon which the insects feed and deposit their layers of wax.

The insects are first tied up in a leaf of the wood-oil tree. A number are then placed in a gourd-like receptacle. These are then packed into two large bamboo baskets, and carried suspended on the shoulders. Many thousands of insects are taken in this way by each man on a trip.

The porters have to travel entirely at night with their delicate and precious loads, for the mid-day heat would be dangerous to the lives of the inmates, as

it would have a tendency to develop them too fast.

It is customary, as the season approaches when the wax messengers are due, for the various cities and villages along the route to leave their gates open, so as to afford free and unobstructed passageway to the carriers. Seen at night running with all their might, dressed in most cases in rainproof straw suits, their flickering lanterns swaying to and fro with the motion of their bodies, they form a weird and picturesque sight. On they go, traversing rocky paths and lofty ascents of the Sze-Chuan mountains, never stopping until the break of day, when they huddle up under cover of a shady retreat, where their baskets can be protected from the heat.

They then prepare their meals, and await the coming of the night to continue their lonely and tiresome journey. On reaching their destination, they immediately go to their masters or other agents, who have been awaiting their arrival. The baskets of insects are forthwith distributed to the respective farmers, who proceed at once to place the insects upon. the food plant. They are tied on the branches in small bags made of leaves, where the heat of the sun hatches them. In these bags, holes are made with a blunt needle, so that the insects may find their way out. When first hatched, they creep rapidly up to the leaves of the food plant, where they nestle for nearly two weeks. After this they begin to scatter and crawl along the branches. The females, after a short period, begin to lay their eggs, and the males deposit white cocoons, which in time completely coat every branch and stem. It is the cocoon of the male which yields the wax. By the first of September the whole tree is literally covered with layers of pure white wax a quarter of an inch thick. This is a beautiful sight; and were it not for the temperature of the air, one might readily imagine there had been a recent snowstorm in the vicinity. The farmers cut off the branches, and scrape them.

The cultivation and preparation for market furnish employment to a large number of industrial workers, who convert the wax into candles for house and street lanterns, also for the making of temple images and other articles con

F you fill your mouth with a handful of wheat and chew it for a short time, your teeth will become clogged with a sticky, pulpy mass that closely

resembles rubber. The phenomenon will doubtless afford you a moment's idle wonder-but probably nothing more. To Mr. William Threlfall Carr, an English inventor, the adhesive property of the substance discloses vast commercial possibilities. To him it means rubber-not merely the inadequate substitute of the Patent Office, but the genuine, practical product used in industry.

The importance of the discovery can. scarcely be overestimated, coming as it does at a time when the world is anxiously asking from where its future supplies of rubber are to come. In half a decade, it is said, the annual consumption of the elastic material will be at least 80,000 tons. Even 100,000 tons is regarded by many as a conservative estimate. A rubber famine looms portentously. Probably thousands of enterprising inventors have racked their brains to find a substitute for the automobile tire,

the golf ball-in short, for the multitudinous uses to which present-day civilization puts rubber. How urgent the need is generally regarded, may be realized. when we learn that in England alone the records of the Patent Office show that 315 inventors believe they have found a substitute for the real article. None of these, however, has really been satisfactory. They have all failed to take, successfully, the place of the genuine substance. The striking feature about Mr. Carr's product, it should be borne well in mind, is that it is not a substitute for rubber; it is rubber itself.

Many

It was by accident that Mr. Carr made the first step in his great discovery. He was but a small boy then. Passing one day through a field of wheat, he plucked a few grains of the cereal, and, chewing them, formed the glutinous compound so familiar to every country lad. years later, recalling his early experience, he began putting his theory to the test. His first laboratory was a small shed in his back yard; his apparatus, a coffee-grinder and a kettle of hot water. Later, he was able to obtain the use of the best shops and laboratories in England.