MISCELLANEOUS. 45 



Quantity of small Seeds, of the size of a great Pin's Head, 

 partly of a flat Figure, almost triangular, of a greyish 

 {Silver Colour to the Eye, and as red as Blood within." 



Then follows a very curious argument in good Old 

 English, as to whether the thing is animal or vegetable, 

 from various scientific men of those days, and, as it was 

 decided that it was the latter, it was called "grain" by 

 which name it has been called ever since. The article 

 concludes thus in favour of the vegetable family of the 

 thing : " Besides this there are other things which deserve 

 our Credit, as that we cannot discover the Feet, Wings, 

 Head, or any other part of an animal in the Cochenelle, 

 which we have, or in all those observations that are made 

 of the true Grain, and if these proofs are not sufficient, we 

 may look into the Judgment of Ximenes and William 

 Piso, in his ' History of the Plants of Brazil/ where, after 

 he has given a long Description of the Species of the 

 Indian Fig, he says it is the same Plant that in New 

 Spain produces and bears the Cochenelle." 



The first importation into England of this " grain," 

 from Teneriffe, as I have said, was in the year 1831, and it 

 then amounted to 8 Ibs. ; the next year it reached 120 Ibs. ; 

 the next 1319 Ibs. ; and gradually increasing every year, 

 by 1853, when I last "took stock" of the Teneriffe 

 "article," it reached 790,524 Ibs. ; but five years after that 

 the total importation into London alone was, from Tene- 

 riffe, Honduras, and Mexico, 13,000 bags, whose average 

 weight was at the least 150 Ibs. each, or 1,950,000 Ibs. 

 I had the curiosity to weigh one ounce of this so- 

 called "grain," and I counted 3350 insects necessary to 

 make up that weight, so that one year's importation of 

 the cochineal insect into London alone amounted to the 

 astonishing number of one hundred and four billions five 

 hundred and twenty millions, which, counting at the rate 



