90 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



l)!it nature, it is alleged, provides for them admirable 

 means of emigration, since, at the period of their 

 birth, a multitude of spiders fasten their nets to the 

 leaves of the nopal, and along these, which serve 

 them for bridges, the young cocci emigrate to the 

 adjacent trees*. We have little doubt that this story 

 has originated in the inaccurate observations of some 

 fanciful traveller, who mistook the threads acciden- 

 tally drawn out from the mass of eggs, for those of a 

 spider. 



The gossamer envelope, however, which we have 

 just described as covering the eggs of the coccus that 

 is common on our British vines, is not intended as a 

 defence against the cold of winter ,» for this species 

 hybernates, according to Re'aumur, in the larva state, 

 though we have frequently searched for these larvae 

 in vain during winter, on vines where they swarmed 

 in myiiads during summer. But the British species 

 of coccus of the hawthorn, &c., on account of which 

 we introduced the subject here, assuredly hybernates 

 in the egg state; and may be seen at the otf-goings 

 of the branchlets in an oval form, like that of a 

 minute wood-louse {Oniscus), of a silvery grey 

 colour, differing, indeed, but little from the tint of 

 the bark. On raising up with the point of a pen- 

 knife what appeared to be the body of the insect, we 

 found that it was hard, dry, and dead, — the mere 

 skin, in a word, of the mother coccus, while under- 

 neath was a multitude of eggs of a deep orange 

 colour. It is worthy of notice, also, that there is, 

 then, no envelope of gossamer, thotigh there is mixed 

 up with the eggs a small quantity of a greyish white 

 powder, which, we are inclined to conjecture, may 

 be the dried remains of it; and, the more so, that 

 Ueaunmr figures the gossamer as abundant in the 

 coccus of the hawtln)rn. Unfortunately he lias not 

 * Si. Pierre, Studies of Nature, vol. i. 



