124 SINGULAR ECONOMY OF VINE-COCCUS. 



The male and female Coccus are very different not only 

 in size, but in make : the male is a small, active, two- 

 winged fly ; the female is a large, lazy, and almost lifeless 

 lump, ten times the size of the male, and so closely at- 

 tached to the rind of the young shoots on which she feeds, 

 that you cannot get her away without killing her. When 

 the female has attained this immense size, and her whole 

 body is full of eggs, she begins laying them, her body 

 being glued down all round at the edges to the rind of the 

 twig; but between her body and the rind, except just 

 round the edges, is a quantity of cottony gum, spread over 

 the whole space which she covers. The laying of eggs is 

 on a different system to that of any other insect : the first 

 egg is laid in the cottony substance without causing any 

 disturbance to the margin of her body glued to the rind ; 

 it does not stick, like most other insects' eggs, but lies 

 quite loose in the cotton ; then another is laid, which 

 pushes the first a little forwards ; and then another, and 

 another, none of them being visible from without ; so that 

 all the eggs that the female Coccus lays she sits on, for all 

 the world like a broody old hen. 



The female Coccus, like a good many other insects, 

 when come of age, is a complete bag of eggs. Now you 

 will observe, that as she lays them, and then pushes them 

 under her body, they must raise up the under skin of her 

 body into a manifest concavity ; so that the body itself 

 daily gets thinner and thinner, while the pile of eggs which 

 it covers gets thicker and thicker. At last her stock of 

 eggs is exhausted ; the under skin of the body meets the 

 upper skin, and grows hard and fast against it ; then the 

 old lady dies, and her body, like the roof of a house, protects 

 the inhabitants below from the inclemency of the weather. 



