136 INTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 
appear to transpire through the skin of many other in- 
sects is of a waxy nature. In the larva of a beetle de- 
scribed by Reaumur, the flocoons are so arranged as to 
give the animal some resemblance to a hedgehog, and 
when rubbed off they are reproduced in twelve hours?. 
Gyllenhal, speaking of Peltis limbata, observes, that when 
alive it is covered with a white powder resembling mould, 
which if rubbed off returns again as long as the animal 
lives>, 
It will not be improper to include under this head 
what further account I have to give of Lac, which though 
regarded as a resin, since Cocci sometimes certainly pro- 
duce wax‘, probably has some analogy with the latter 
substance. When the females of this Coccus (C. Lacca) 
have fixed themselves to a part of the branch of the 
trees on which they feed (#icus religiosa and indica, 
Butea frondosa, and Rhamnus Jujuba*), a peilucid and 
glutinous substance begins to exude from the margins 
of the body, and in the end covers the whole insect with 
a cell of this substance, which when hardened by expo- 
sure to the air becomes lac. So numerous are these in- 
sects, and so closely crowded together, that they often 
entirely cover a branch; and the groups take different 
shapes, as squares, hexagons, &c., according to the 
space left round the insect which first began to form its 
cell. Under these cells the females deposit their eggs, 
which after a certain period are hatched, and the young 
ones eat their way out. ‘Though indisputably an animal. 
secretion, many of the properties of lac are not very 
different from those of the juices of the trees on which 
* Reaum. iii. 396—. £, xxxi. f. 20—29. » Insect. Suec. i, 257. 
* Voz. I. p. 326. 4 N. Dict. a’ Hist. Nat. xvii. 189. 
