Lac
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Lac. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a resinous substance. It is produced chiefly on the twigs of the banyan tree by a scale insect allied to the cochineal insect and to the well known scale insect pests of the orchard. It is therefore a forest product of insect origin. The lac insect punctures the bark of the twig and feeds on the sap, all the while exuding a resin under cover of which it resides, lays its eggs, and dies. The young scramble out and fasten upon tender spots to repeat the history of the parent. In this way the twigs become completely encrusted with lac and are collected by the natives. The encrusted twigs are stick lac; broken from the twig, it is called seed lac; melted into thin plates, it is the shellac of commerce, much used in finishing woodwork. Genuine lac may be molded into tough, lustrous figures of extreme beauty. It is the material used by the Chinese and Japanese in their celebrated lacquer work. Their tea basins, chowchow bowls, and other articles, covered with a layer of lac, colored with vermilion, and molded into beautiful patterns, are veritable gems of art. Lac dye is obtained from the remnants of the insect in the stick lac. India produces about $9,000,000 worth of lac yearly. Half of the output is marketed in the United States . The price varies from $30 to $45 per hundredweight. See Gum ; Cochineal ; Kauri ; Painting
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or LAK, from the Sanskrit lak- 100,0002 In the sha or laksha, that is, 100,000. In the East Indies it is applied to the computation of money. Thus, a lac of rupees is 100,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 account of the lac insect is broadly right — the scale insect now called Kerria lacca still encrusts twigs in India and Thailand, still yields stick lac, seed lac and shellac — but two of its claims have not held. The celebrated Chinese and Japanese lacquer it credits to lac is in fact made from the sap of the lacquer tree, Toxicodendron vernicifluum, a wholly different substance; and lac dye was already being pushed aside by synthetic aniline colours as Aiton's wrote. Shellac's great market, wood finishing, collapsed after nitrocellulose lacquers and then polyurethanes arrived, and the 78-rpm shellac gramophone disc gave way to vinyl from 1948, though shellac survives as French polish, as a pill coating and as the food glaze E904 on sweets and apples. Collier's 1921 note is about a different word entirely — the Sanskrit-derived lakh, 100,000 — which remains everyday usage in Indian English and official Indian statistics.
Written for this edition, 2026.