THE COCHLNEAL INSECT. 119 



respect to the rest of the animal, as hardly 

 to be discovered except by a good eye, or by 

 the assistance of a glass ; so that on a gene- 

 ral view it bears as great a resemblance to a 

 seed or berry as to an animal. This was 

 the cause of that difference in opinion, which 

 long subsisted between several authors ; some 

 maintaining that Cochineal was a berry, 

 while others contended that it was an insect. 

 We must also here advert to another error, 

 viz. that the cochineal was a species of 

 coccinella or lady-bird. This seems to have 

 taken its rise from specimens of the cocci- 

 nella cacti of Linnaeus, being sometimes 

 accidentally intermixed with the Cochineal in 

 gathering and drying. 



When the female Cochineal insect is ar- 

 rived at its full size, it fixes itself to the 

 surface of the leaf, and envelops itself in a 

 white cottony matter, which it is supposed 

 to spin or draw through its proboscis in a 

 xjontinued double filament, it being observed 

 that two filaments are frequently seen pro- 

 ceeding firom the tip of the proboscis in the 

 full-grown insects. 



The male is a small and rather slender 



