422 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



where they are numerous they are as destructive as 

 the plant-lice, but this in our latitude, is chiefly in the 

 vinery, the stove and the greenhouse. The two sexes 

 in the perfect state are strikingly dissimilar, the male 

 possessing an elongate body with a pair of large upper 

 wings, and two minute appendages representing the 

 lower wings, but it is not provided with any suctorial 

 apparatus whatever, so that, like many other perfect 

 insects, it is incapable of taking food, while the female 

 is always wingless and armed with a sharp rostrum. 

 With this apparatus it pierces the stems and leaves of 

 the plants on the sap of which it subsists ; in its earliest 

 stage it also resembles the other sex, but is eventually 

 developed into an ovate tortoise-like form, without a 

 trace of articulations, or the slightest evidence of 

 vitality. It becomes, in fact, simply a scale distended 

 with eggs, and firmly adhering, like a sucker, to the 

 surface on which it is found. The deposition and 

 hatching of the eggs take place underneath this shield- 

 like body, but the young do not emerge till after the 

 death of the parent. 



As it has fallen to our lot to meet with a few speci- 

 mens of the true Cochineal insect on a species of 

 Cactus formerly cultivated in the stove at Uppark, we 

 feel justified in making a passing allusion to this most 

 important member of the family of scale insects. It 

 is extensively cultivated on the Opuntia Cocci/era in 

 the West Indies and Mexico, and is largely exported 

 for dyeing purposes. Other species have long been 

 celebrated for the scarlet dye they yield, for instance, 

 the Coccus Ilicis, known to the Greeks, the Romans, 

 the Arabs and the Persians, and the Coccus Polonicus, 

 or Scarlet grain of Poland ; but these have now given 

 place to the more valuable Coceus Cacti (Pseudococcus 

 of Westwood) or Cochineal insect, of which we are 

 told that 1 50,000 pounds weight, representing a money 

 value of ^370,000, are annually consumed in England 

 alone. Another species, the East Indian Coccus lacca, 



