THE SCALE INSECT. 651 



' Among tnese insects may be seen that which the Romans 

 required of woman carried to the highest degree — 



Lanam fecit, domum servavit. 

 She spun her wool and kept lier house. 



While the male — small, rakish, nobly clothed in purple — flies 

 about at hazard, the female, scarcely living, taken for a 

 gall of the tree, for the swelling of a leaf or branch, remains 

 motionless and waits for her husband. The male, who is 

 singularly small in comparison, walks over her, surveys her 

 all over, for she is for him a sufficiently large tract. He ex- 

 amines her from north to south and from east to west, and it 

 is not until he is fatigued with running about over his beloved 

 object that he risks the avowal of his flame ; after which, 

 flying once or twice round his beloved, he departs. 



' The wife from that moment thinks of nothing but the 

 numerous family she has to bring into the world — about two 

 thousand children. She begins to lay, and her eggs all come 

 enveloped in a sort of cotton. Lanam fecit. 



' Then the Scale Insect changes its form — its belly flattens 

 and becomes so thin that it joins the back ; which forms a 

 hollow space imder it in which are its eggs. Its back hardens, 

 the belly and the back are quite confounded ; the Scale Insect 

 withers, dies, and becomes a dwelling-place for its young ones. 

 This is better than the domum servavit ; she does not remain 

 in the house, she becomes the house itself.' 



In England the Scale Insects are an unmitigated nuisance, 

 especially in greenhouses and hothouses, where they flourish 

 in great abundance, sticking upon the leaves of various 

 plants and sadly vexing the heart of the gardener. Yet some 

 of the Cocci are directly beneficial to man, though those 

 species which reside in our country have never yet been put 

 to any use. It is to an Asiatic species of Coccus (^Coccus 

 lacca, or Lac Insect) that we are indebted for our sealing- 

 wax and the basis of many varnishes. The female insect 

 produces the well-known material called ' lac,' and without her 

 aid we should be deprived of a most useful as well as orna- 

 mental substance. 



Another of these insects, Coccus ceriferus, produces in 

 abundance a kind of wax, in which the body of the female is 



