CACTACEA. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
18 
distributed from southern New England southward in the neighborhood of the coast to the West Indies, 
and from southern British Columbia through western North America to Chili, the Galapagos Islands, 
a8 
Brazil, and Argentina, the largest number of species occurring in the arid region near the boundary 
between the United States and Mexico. 
Of the species of the United States three attain on the deserts 
of southern’ Arizona the size and habit of small trees. 
Cochineal’ is derived from a scale-insect, Coccws Cacti, which feeds on the juices of Opuntia 
Philippi, Linnea, xxxiii. 82; Cat. Pl. Chil. 93.— Hemsley, Bot. 
Biol. Am. Cent. i. 549. — Schumann, Martius Fl. Brasil. iv. pt. ii. 
302 ; Monog. Cact. 650.— Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. iii. 
418. 
1 On the Galapagos Islands, on the equator nearly seven hundred 
and fifty miles from the coast of Ecuador, the most isolated known 
station inhabited naturally by any Opuntia, occurs the largest repre- 
sentative of the genus. This is : — 
Opuntia Galapageia, Henslow, Mag. Zodl. Bot. i. 467, t. 14, f. 2 
(1837). — Hooker f. Trans. Linn. Soc. xx. 223. — Andersson, Stockh. 
Akad. Handl. 1853, 95 (Om Galapagos-Oarnes Veg.).— Hemsley, 
Gard. Chron. ser. 3, xxiv. 265, f. 75.— Schumann, Monog. Cact. 
747. 
Opuntia Galapageia, which is one of the flat-branched species, 
although frequently shrubby grows under favorable conditions to 
the height of twenty feet, with a trunk two feet in diameter and 
(See Bauer, Biol. Centralblatt, xii. 247 
[Ein Besuch der Galapagos-Insein].) 
stout spreading branches. 
2 Cochineal, which consists of the females of Coccus Cacti, Lin- 
nzus, an hemipterous insect, is a dye used for the production of 
scarlet, crimson, orange, and other tints, and in the preparation of 
lake and carmine paints. It owes its tinctorial power to the pre- 
sence of cochinealin or carmanic acid, which is composed of hydro- 
gen, carbon, and oxygen. The male insect is half the size of the 
female, with long white wings and a dark red body terminating in 
The 
female has a dark brown body and no wings, and occurs in the pro- 
two diverging sete, and is devoid of a nutritive apparatus. 
portion of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred to one of the 
When the Spaniards entered Mexico in 1518 they found 
ployed by the i 
and garments, the dry insects, which they reared with the greatest 
males. 
cochineal habitant 
in coloring their dwellings 
care on plantations of the Opuntias, forming one of the staple trib- 
utes from certain provinces, probably chiefly from Oaxaca, the 
little village of Cuilapan being usually considered the original 
home of the cochineal industry. (See Clavigero, Storia Antica del 
Messico, i. 114, nota. — Prescott, Conquest of Memico, ii. 136.) For 
a century and a half after its introduction into Europe cochineal was 
believed to consist of the seeds of a Cactus or some other vegetable 
bstance (see C: De Atramentis, 211), but in 1672 Martin 
Lister hazarded the conjecture that it might be a sort of kermes 
(Phil. Trans. vii. 5059) ; and in 1691 a letter containing Observa- 
tions on the making of Cochineal, according to a Relation had from 
bliched 
in the £ l Trans- 
an Old Spaniard at Jamaica, p Philosophi 
actions (xvii. 502), pointed out that cochineal was really an insect. 
In this tion i 
which the insects feed were given, and their use in hedges de- 
scribed. A little later, in 1704, Leeuwenhoek with the aid of his 
peng 
for ting the plants on 
b abid og 
showed. 
Pp ly the animal nature of the dye and 
finally settled the question of the origin of cochineal (Phil. Trans. 
xxiy. 1614). 
America, Peru, and other parts of South America, and in 1858, 
The cochineal industry once flourished in Central 
after the destruction of their vineyards, its cultivation was success- 
fully introduced into the Canary Islands, which in 1869 exported 
six and a half million pounds of the dye, about seventy thousand of 
the dried insects weighing one pound. Cochineal has also been 
produced in southern Spain, Algeria, India, and the Dutch East 
India Islands. 
In Mexico the insects are sometimes gathered from wild plants, 
but the product is of poor quality, and the best cochineal is ob- 
tained by regular cultivation. The insects are reared in winter in 
huts, and from the end of May until the beginning of August are 
put out on plants carefully cultivated in inclosed gardens or nopal- 
ries by hanging on the branches of the Opuntias small gauze bags, 
each containi ful of the i 
The young as fast as they are born escape from the bags and 
g about a tabl ted females. 
spread over the surface of the branch, where they absorb its juices 
and grow rapidly until their legs, antennz, and probosces are almost 
indistinguishable. As soon as insects show signs of spawning, they 
are rapidly brushed into bags or baskets and are killed by immer- 
sion in hot water, by exposure to the sun, or in heated ovens, the 
quality of the product depending largely on the method and care 
used in killing and curing the insects. Two or three crops are 
produced in a season. The “grain,” as the dried cochineal is 
called, is sifted to free it of an adherent white powder ; it is then 
picked over to remove all foreign matter and packed in bags for 
export. There are two principal varieties recognized in com- 
merce: silver cochineal, which is of a grayish red color, with the 
furrows of the body covered by a whitish bloom, and black cochi- 
neal, which is of a darker red. 
The plant chiefly used to feed the cochineal insect in Mexico 
and Central America is Nopalea cochenillifer, Salm-Dyck, Cact. 
Hort. Dyck. ed. 3 (1850) (Cactus cochenillifer, Linneeus, Spec. 468 
[1753], Opuntia cochinelifera, Miller, Dict. ed. 8, No. 6 [1765]), 
which differs from the flat-leaved Opuntias in its erect petals 
much shorter than the long stamens, and which is probably a 
native of Peru, although now widely spread by cultivation through 
the warmer parts of America and through other warm dry coun- 
tries. The cochineal insect is also reared on Opuntia Ficus-Indica 
and on Opuntia Tuna, which, according to Lowe (Hooker Jour. Bot. 
i. 40; Man. Fl. Mad. 318), is the only species used in the Canary 
Islands for the purpose. In a wild state the cochineal insect or 
some of its allies are found on many other species of Opuntia. 
(For accounts of Coccus Cacti, and of the cochineal industry, see 
Melchior de la Ruusscher, Natuerlyke historie van de Couchenille.— 
Rutty, Phil. Trans. xxxvi.264 [The Natural History of Cochineal].— 
Thiery de Menonville, Traité de la Culture du Nopal et de l’ Educa- 
tion de la Cochenille dans les colonies frangaises de V Amérique. — 
Francisco Hernandez, Hist. Pl. Nov. Hisp. ed. Madrid, 1790, ii. 
177.— Staunton, Account of the Embassy of the King of Great Britain 
to the Empire of China, i. 186, Atlas, t. 12. — Humboldt, Essai Pol. 
Nouv. Esp. iii. 242. — Bancroft, Philosophy of Permanent Colors, i. 
410.— Royle, Essay on the Productive Resources of India, 57. —Sig- 
noret, Ann. Soc. Ent. France, sér. 4, viii. 846 [Essai sur les Cochen- 
illes]. — Vett, Woordenbock van Nederlandsch-Indie Cochenille. — 
Spons, Encyclopedia of the Industrial Arts, Manufactures, and Raw 
Commercial Products, i. 856.— Ober, Travels in Memico, 529, — 
