VOL. XXIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. ^ 141 



hands till their wings, legs, &c fall off, which are garbled out, and then the 

 remaining trunks of the animals are put into shallow copper boxes, till they 

 become quite dry. The aforesaid plant has no flowers or blossoms on it, and 

 its fruit is of a fleshy substance and red, and when ripe, by handling it, the 

 fingers will look as if they were stained with mulberries. Some say, that the 

 cochineal worms feed on the blossoms and fruit of this plant, which causes their 

 bodies to be of that red colour. And that if you take the seed of the plant or 

 the dead worms, and dry them after the above-mentioned manner, that cochi- 

 neal is not so good as when those animals have got wings, and are then smo- 

 thered." 



Now for further satisfaction, I took several particles of this same cochineal, 

 both of the largest and smallest, and having dissected them, I found that they 

 had all eggs in their bellies, excepting only one that was exceedingly small. 

 Having opened some of the largest trunks, and separated the eggs, which I 

 took out of their bodies, and counted them, I judged that there were above 

 200; and having observed several of them with my microscope, I could perceive 

 not only a membrane or shell on most of them, but also an animalculum of an 

 oval shape included in the said shell, and almost as large as the shell that con- 

 tained it, which seemed at first very surprising, and almost incredible in so 

 small a species of fly as the cochineal, till by a very nice and long inquiry I was 

 fully satisfied, that it was really an animalculum that lay within it. I pursued 

 this operation with so good success, that I not only separated the egg-shell from 

 the animalculum, but in some of them I could perceive their legs also orderly 

 folded up against their body, and could separate them from it, especially in such 

 as were full grown-, nay, in some I even discovered the several joints of the 

 legs, and thus in the space of two days I saw the legs of 100 animalcula, many 

 of which in my handling were broken off", and lay by themselves. 



We must not imagine, that these animalcula have such short legs as the cater- 

 pillars or silk- worms; but the unborn ones have, in proportion to their size, legs 

 as long as those that are full grown ; and as the legs stand close to the head, in 

 that part which one may call the breast, so when the said animalculum lay 

 stretched out at length, its little legs could be just seen peeping out of the 

 bodyi V ! 



Thus are those persons mistaken who give the name of worms to these ani- 

 malcula, and the reason of their error proceeds from hence, that through the 

 exceeding smallness of the object, they are not able to discover with their naked 

 eye, whether the new born insect be a worm or any other kind of animal; 200 

 or more eggs of these animals can lie in so small a particle of matter, as a single 

 grain of cochineal ; to which if you add the consideration of the great number 



