34-8 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
very industrious in defending them from other insects ; for if 
any other kind comes among them, they take care to brush 
them off with foxes’ tails. Towards the end of the year, 
when the rains and cold weather are coming on, which are 
fatal to these insects, they take oil' the leaves or branches, 
covered with the cochineal that have not attained their utmost 
degree of perfection, and keep them in their houses till winter 
is past. These leaves are very thick and juicy, and supply 
them with nourishment, while they remain within doors. 
When the milder weather returns, and these animals are about 
to exclude their young, the natives make them nests, like 
those of birds, but less, of tree-moss, or soft hay, or the 
down of cocoa-nuts, placing twelve in every nest. These 
they fix on the thorns of the prickly pear-plant, and in three 
or four days time they bring forth their young, which leave 
their nests in a few days, and creep upon the branches of the 
plant, till they find a proper place to rest in. 
When the native Americans have gathered the cochineal, 
they put them into holes in the ground, where they kill them 
with boiling water, and afterwards dry them in the sun, or 
in an oven, or lay them upon hot plates. From the various 
methods of killing them, arise the different colours which 
they appear in when brought to us. While they are living, 
they seem to be sprinkled over with a white powder, which 
they lose as soon as the boiling water is poured upon them. 
Those that are dried upon hot plates are the blackest. 
What we call the cochineal, are only the females, for the 
males are a sort of liy, as already observed in the kermes. 
They are used both for dyeing and medicine, and are said to 
have much lie same virtue as the kermes, though they are 
now seldom used aione, but are mixed with other things for 
the sake of the colour. 
We shall end this account of the beetle tribe, with the 
history of an animal which cannot properly be ranked under 
this species, and yet which cannot be more methodically 
ranged under any other. This is the insect that forms and 
resides in the gail-nut, the spoils of which are converted to 
such useful purposes. 
The gall insects, are bred in a sort of bodies adhering to 
a kind of oak in Asia, which differ with regard to their 
colour, size, roughness, smoothness, and shape, and which 
we call gulls. They are not fruit as some have imagined, but 
preternatural tumours, owing to the wounds given to the buds, 
leaves, and twigs of the tree, by a kind of insect that lay 
their eggs within them. This animal is furnished with an 
implement, by which the female penetrates into the bark of 
the tree, or into that spot which just begins to bud, and there 
