124 SINGULAR ECONOMY OF VTNE-COCCUS. 
The male and female Coccus are very different not only 
in size, but in make : the male is a small, active, two- 
winged fly ; the female is a large, lazy, and almost lifeless 
lump, ten times the size of the male, and so closely at- 
tached to the rind of the young shoots on which she feeds, 
that you cannot get her away without killing her. When 
the female has attained this immense size, and her whole 
body is full of eggs, she begins laying them, her body 
being glued down all round at the edges to the rind of the 
twig; but betw^een her body and the rind, except just 
round the edges, is a quantity of cottony gum, spread over 
the whole space which she covers. The laying of eggs is 
on a different system to that of any other insect : the first 
egg is laid in the cottony substance without causing any 
disturbance to the margin of her body glued to the rind ; 
it does not stick, like most other insects' eggs, but lies 
quite loose in the cotton ; then another is laid, which 
pushes the first a little forwards ; and then another, and 
another, none of them being visible from without ; so that 
all the eggs that the female Coccus lays she sits on, for all 
the world like a broody old hen. 
The female Coccus, like a good many other insects, 
when come of age, is a complete bag of eggs. Now you 
will observe, that as she lays them, and then pushes them 
under her body, they must raise up the under skin of her 
body into a manifest concavity ; so that the body itself 
daily gets thinner and thinner, while the pile of eggs which 
it covers gets thicker and thicker. At last her stock of 
eggs is exhausted ; the under skin of the body meets the 
upper skin, and grows hard and fast against it ; then the 
old lady dies, and her body, like the roof of a house, protects 
the inhabitants below from the inclemency of the weather. 
