MIGRATION OF THE COCHINEAL. 127 



whether the trade would answer in any country 

 where labour is more valuable. In some parts of 

 Guaxaca (called by Humboldt Oaxaca), they 

 obtain three harvests of cochineal in the year, the 

 first being the least lucrative, because the bodies 

 of the insects yield very little colouring matter 

 when they die naturally, and this is the case at 

 the first harvest, when they have just brought 

 forth their young. Many of the negro proprietors 

 of nopaleries, especially those in the neighbourhood 

 of Oaxaca, have a very ancient and singular 

 custom of making their cochineals emigrate during 

 the rainy season. As the Spaniard causes his 

 flocks of merinos to emigrate on the approach of 

 cold, so do these negroes send away their crop 

 during a season which might prove fatal to them. 

 The insects are packed in hampers, and carried as 

 quickly as possible, on the backs of negroes, to a 

 place nine leagues distant from the town, not so 

 heavily visited with rain. Here they distribute 

 them on the nopals, and keep them there till the 

 month of October, when they return with then- 

 freight, and replace it in the nopaleries of Oaxaca. 



