140 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1/04. 



annual pension for many years : and of the family of the Great Duke of Tus- 

 cany; and of his preceptor the famous Galilaeo Galilaei, with a print of Galileo's 

 busto in brass, which is set over the gate. 



An Account of Cochineal. By Mr. Ant. Van Leuwenhoeck, F.R.S. 



N° 292, p. J 6 14. 



A merchant of Amsterdam writes, that it is impossible, and altogether incre- 

 dible, that the drug called cochineal should be, as I have asserted, flies, or any 

 sort of animal endued with wings, head or feet; not only if we consider the vast 

 number of them that are brought in every fleet from America; for you will find 

 that two of the largest of these particles, 8 of the middling sort, and 20 of the 

 smallest, scarcely weigh a gold grain; so that in a pound of them, at a medium 

 of large and sn)all, one may count 102400 particles; now in a fleet that brings 

 200000 pounds of this drug, what a vast number of animals must there be ? 

 Besides, says he, where can you find men enough, who at the proper time of 

 the year shall catch these insects, and dismember every individual by pulling off 

 its head, legs and wings, &c. so that he concludes that cochineal must needs 

 be a fruit, or the excrescence of some kind of plant. 



Though I am convinced that cochineal is nothing else but the trunk or hinder 

 part of a living creature, and was persuaded also that the cochineal animals, 

 like other insects from worms, are changed into flies ; yet for further satisfac- 

 tion, I have renewed my inquiries upon this subject, and in so doing I find 

 reason to reject some of my former positions, being now fully convinced that 

 the cochineal animals are not produced from worms, but at once bring forth 

 their own likenesses. 



Mr. L. then premises a short abstract of what he before said in N° IQS, viz. 

 that there is a certain plant called the prickle pear, or Indian fig ; the leaves of 

 which are round and thick, and sharp pointed ; that upon the leaves or twigs 

 of the said plant are small knobs or protuberances, from whence are produced 

 by the heat of the sun little worms; that these worms in process of time become 

 flies in likeness to cow-ladies or lady-birds, as some call them, which when 

 they are arrived to their full growth, are taken in this manner; to windward of 

 the plant, on which these animals are found, they kindle a fire of any combus- 

 tible matter, having first spread cloths under and round about the said plant, 

 with the smoke of which they are presently suffocated ; then shaking tTie tree, 

 they receive them upon those cloths in great numbers, and with very little trou- 

 ble; after which they spread them abroad in a like cloth on a sandy place, or a 

 stone floor, where they are exposed to the heat of the sun till they are dried, 

 that is, till their small bodies are shrivelled up together, and rubbed between the 



