COBURGHIA COCCINELLID.E. 



71 



present acquainted, as living inhabitants of the fresh 

 waters, are found imbedded in the earth, though 

 only, we believe, in fresh water formations. Indeed 

 from the habit which these fishes have of burying 

 themselves in the mud, we might easily conclude that 

 small and feeble as they are, they are much more 

 likely to be preserved in the soil, than more powerful 

 fishes, v hich have no such habit ; for we have only 

 to suppose that the return of the water to their tem- 

 porarily dry haunts is accompanied, as it often must 

 be, with a mass of stones and gravel of considerable 

 thickness, in order to see how they must frequently 

 be buried in the earth to such a depth, as to be 

 equally beyond the power of escape, and the chance 

 of decomposition. By attending to the habits of 

 those animals, which are found both in a living and 

 a fossil state, we are often enabled to make the past 

 and the present history of the animal kingdom throw 

 light upon each other. 



COBURGHIA (Sweet). A hexandrious bulbous 

 plant introduced from South America, which was first 

 called Pancratium incarnatum by Kunth, but described 

 and figured in Sweet's Flower Garden, and re-named 

 by the author in honour of Prince Coburg, now king 

 of Belgium. 



COCCID./E (Leach ; Gallinsecta, Latreille ; genus 

 Coccus, Linnaeus). A family placed by Latreille in 

 the order Hemiptera, and sub-order Homoptem, but 

 considered by De Geer and some of the most recent 

 French entomologists as forming the type of a distinct 

 and very anomalous order. The species of this 

 family, which are generally called scale insects, are 

 of small size, having, in the winged individuals, short 

 legs, with only two joints to the tarsi, end a single 

 hook at the extremity of each. The male is destitute 

 of a mouth, but is furnished with two large wings and 

 a pair of small appendages behind the wings, resem- 

 bling the poisers of the diptera ; the abdomen also in 

 this sex is terminated by two or more slender fila- 

 ments. The antennae are moderately long and filiform, 

 the number of joints not exceeding eleven. The 

 females on the contrary, in their perfect state, are 

 amongst the least perfectly organised of insects, ap- 

 pearing only as an inert scale-like mass, destitute of 

 legs or antennae, and affixed to the bark of various 

 trees and plants, which consequently appears, from 

 the number of individuals collected together, to be 

 covered by a vast number of galls of an oval or 

 rounded form ; these are, however, female cocci 

 affixed to the plant. In their early stages, however, 

 these insects are smaller and more active, having 

 much the appearance of tiny red tortoises, and feed- 

 ing like their parents upon the stems or leaves, which 

 they pierce by means of a long and sharp rostrum, 

 which goes to the very centre of the shoot, causing 

 the sap to flow in abundance, or bleeding the plants 

 as it is termed, and by which means great injury is 

 done, especially to the vines, which are liable to be 

 much infested vith them, and which are thereby 

 sometimes rendered barren. In this state they con- 

 tinue growing in size for some time, but the period 

 soon arrives when the sexes undergo a very singular 

 difference in their transformations. All the insects 

 now affix themselves to the surface of the plants or 

 stems, the little activity which they had previously 

 possessed entirely ceasing. The males discontinue 

 to increase in size, and if one of them be opened 

 carefully, a small and elegant chrysalis will be found 

 within the old skin of the larva ; the females, how- 



ever, continue to increase in size until they are many 

 times larger than the other sex, the margins of the 

 body being glued down to the plant, the body being 

 by degrees distended by a very great number of eggs 

 until nothing more than the upper and under skins of 

 the insect remains. Soon afterwards the male fly, of 

 a very elegant form makes his appearance, and being 

 unprovided with any means of taking food is adapted 

 only for continuing the species. Alter impregnation 

 the female commences the deposition of her bag of 

 eggs, but the mode in which this is performed is quite 

 unlike what takes place in other insects ; immediately 

 beneath her body is a layer of white gummy matter, 

 in the midst of which the eggs are deposited, and 

 which prevents them from sticking to the rind of the 

 bark, so that they are pushed by degrees beneath the 

 body, which at last becomes nothing more than a thin 

 covering composed of the upper and under pellicles, 

 under which are now to be found the eggs which 

 had before been between them. The female then 

 dies, and the young ones when hatched make their 

 way from beneath this scaly covering, again to 

 perform a like succession of ravages. These insects 

 are often so injurious that various plans have been, 

 resorted to for destroying them, such as scraping 

 the bark, washing it with soap and water, or a decoc- 

 tion of bitter aloes, &c. 



Some of the species of this family are highly prized 

 for the fine red dye which they afford, amongst these 

 the most valuable is the cochineal insect (Coccus cacti 

 of Linnaeus), an inhabitant of Mexico, where it ia 

 cultivated upon a species of opuntia. In our botanical 

 article CACTE^E is given an account of its habits, &c. 

 In the last part of the Annals of the Entomological 

 Society of Paris, we find it stated, that the French 

 colonists of Algiers have undertaken the cultivation 

 of the cochineal with great success. There have 

 been three generations of the insect in the course 

 of a year and a half, and in a very short period 

 1000 square feet of cactus will be inhabited by this 

 precious insect, so that it may be fairly said to 

 be acclimated in that colony as we find Algiers 

 now termed. Another species, Coccus adonidum, is 

 very abundant in our hot-houses, where it does 

 much injury to the vines ; it deposits its eggs in an 

 envelope of white cottony matter. Dr. Kidd has 

 published an interesting account of it in the Entomo- 

 logical Magazine, vol. ii. We have already, in our 

 article CHEHMES, given a notice of the distribution of 

 this genus, and shall therefore only here mention, in 

 addition, that various other genera have recently 

 been proposed by M. Gene, in the Fauna del Regno 

 di Napoli ; and that in the curious allied British 

 genus Darthesia, the female does not lose the power 

 of locomotion, the male having the abdomen termi- 

 nated with numerous long and very delicate white 

 hairs. 



COCCINELLIDjE (Latreille). A family of 

 coleopterous insects belonging to the section Trimera, 

 and including the insects familiarly called lady-birds, 

 lady-cows, &c. The body is nearly hemispherical, 

 the thorax short, transverse, somewhat lunate, the 

 antennae are very short, and terminated by a com- 

 pressed inarticulate club, the terminal joint of the 

 palpi is large and hatchet-shaped, and the tarsi are 

 composed of only three joints, of which the second is 

 deeply cleft. This family corresponds with the Lin 

 ncean genus Coccinella, and comprises an extensive 

 series of small but pretty insects, having the body 



