90 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



but nature, it is alleged, provides for them admirable 

 means of emigration, since, at the period of their 

 birth, a multitude of spiders fasten their nets to the 

 leaves of the nopal, and along these, which serve 

 them for bridges, the young cocci emigrate to the 

 adjacent trees.* We have little doubt that this story- 

 has originated in the inaccurate observations of some 

 fanciful traveller, who mistook the threads accidentally 

 drawn out from the mass of eggs, for those of a 

 spider. 



The gossamer envelope, however, which we have 

 just described as covering the eggs of the coccus that 

 is common on our British vines, is not intended as a 

 defence against the cold of winter; for this species 

 hybernates, according to Reaumur, in the larva state, 

 though we have frequently searched for these larvee 

 in vain during winter, on vines where they swarmed 

 in myriads during summer. But the British species 

 of coccus of the hawthorn, &c, on account of which 

 we introduced the subject here, assuredly hybernates 

 in the egg state; and may be seen at the off-goings 

 of the branchlets in an oval form, like that of a 

 minute wood-louse (Oniscus), of a silvery gray 

 colour, differing, indeed, but little from the tint of 

 the bark. On raising up with the point of a pen- 

 knife what appeared to be the body of the insect, we 

 found that it was hard, dry, and dead, — tlie mere 

 skin, in a word, of the mother coccus, while under- 

 neath was a multitude of eggs of a deep orange 

 colour. It is worthy of notice, also, that there is, 

 then, no envelope of gossamer, tiiough there is mixed 

 up with the eggs a small quantity of a grayish white 

 powder, which, we are inclined to conjecture, may 

 be the dried remains of it; and, the more .so, that 

 Ri'aumur figures the gossamer as abundant in the 

 coccus of the hawthorn. Unfortunately he has not 



* St Pierre, Studies of Nature, vol. i. 



