GUM-LAC INSECT. 399 



scarlet, and was collected in great quantity for that purpose. Ac- 

 cording to the mildness or severity of the winter, the harvest of the 

 kermes is said to be more or less plentiful ; and it is no very un- 

 common thing to have two harvests in a year. Before dying, the 

 berries or dormant insects are steeped in vinegar, to prevent the ex- 

 clusion of the young animals by thus killing the parents. They 

 are then spread or thrown on linen, and as long as they continue 

 moist are turned twice or thrice a day, to prevent their heating, 

 and are afterwards put up for sale. 



Woollen cloth dyed with kermes was called scarlet in grain ; the 

 animal having been popularly considered as a grain : the colour is a 

 durable, deep-red, called ox-blood colour, much inferior to the 

 brilliancy of cochineal scarlet, but far more lasting, and less liable 

 to stain. Mons. Hellot, in his Art tie Tendre, observes that the 

 figured cloths to be seen in the old tapestries of Brussels and the 

 other manufactures of Flanders, which have scarcely lost any thing 

 of their liveliness by standing for two hundred years, were all dyed 

 with this ingredient. 



3. Gum. lac Insect. 



Coccus ficus, LlNtf. 



The body of this insect is of a red colour, the antennas branched, 

 the tail two-bristled. It is found on the ficus religiosa and indica 

 (the banian tree), and produces the gum-lac of the shops. It is 

 about the end of January that the female fixes herself, in conse- 

 quence of pregnancy, to the succulent extremities of the young 

 branches, and becomes torpid. She now secretes, apparently from the 

 edges of the antennas, limbs, and setae of the tail, aspissid, pellucid 

 liquor by which it becomes enveloped ; and it is this secretion which 

 forms the gum-lac : yet as a gum very nearly resembling it is ob- 

 tained from the plaso, and various other trees on which this insect 

 fixes, by making incisions through their bark, it should seem that 

 the secreted gum is an unchanged vegetable, rather than an animal 

 production. It is in the cells of this viscid matter that the female 

 deposits her eggs. In March the different cells are completely 

 formed ; in November we find about twenty or thirty oval eggs, 

 or rather young grubs occupying them, and apparently supported 

 by the fluid they contain. When this fluid is all expended, the 



