100 



HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



wing : the other internal, which runs parallel to ths- 

 former. The internal colour of this infe£l: is a deep red, 

 but darker in the female ; and the external colour a pale 

 red. In the wild cochineal the internal colour is flill 

 darker, and the external whitifh or afti-coloured. The 

 cochineal is reared upon a fpecies of Nofal, or Opuntia, 

 or Indian fig, which grows to the height of about eight 

 feet, and bears a fruit like the figs of other Opuntias, 

 but not eatable. It feeds upon the leaves of that tree, 

 by fucking the juice with a trunk fituated in the thorax 

 betwixt the two fore feet : there it palTes through all the 

 ftages of its growth, and at length produces a numerous 

 oflTspring. The manner of multiplying peculiar to thefe 

 valuable infedls, the management of the Indians in rear- 

 ing them, together with the means employed to defend 

 them from rain, which is fo hurtful to them, and from 

 many enemies which perfecute them, (hall be explained 

 when we come to fpeak of the agriculture of the Mexi- 

 cans (/■). 



Among the water infe^ls, the Atetepitz is a marfli 

 beetle refembling in ftiape and fize the beetles that fly. 

 It has four feet, and is covered with a hard fliell. The 

 Atopinan is a marfli grafliopper, of a dark colour, about 

 fix inches long and two broad. The Ahuihuitla is a 

 worm of the Mexican lake, four inches long, and of the 

 thicknefs of a goofe-quill ; of a tawny colour upon the 



upper 



(i) D. Ant. Ulloa fays, that the Nopal ^ upon which the cochineal is reared, 

 has no prickles ; but in MIfteca, where I was for five years, I always faw it upon 

 prickly nopals. Mr. de Raynal imagines, that the colour of the cochineal is ta- 

 be afcribed^to the red fig upon which it lives ; but that author has been mifin- 

 formed ; for neither does the cochineal feed upon the fruit, but only upon tlic 

 leaf, which is perfectly green ; nor does that nopal bear red but white figs. It 

 is trtre, it may be reared upon the fpecies with a red fig, but that is not the pro- 

 per plant of the cochineal. 



