Guaxaca, and transported them to St. Domingo, and who unquestionably had the best means of determining 
the kinds of Cacti, cultivated for the insect, describes particularly three sorts, on which it may be reared 
and cultivated to advantage. 
1. The Cactier Nopal ; upon which alone the Cochineal is reared in Mexico, both the fine and the 
common Cochineal (la Cochenille fine et sylvestre ) although there are throughout the country, many other 
kinds of Cactus. The two following, therefore, it is presumed, are employed in St. Domingo. 
2. The Cactier Splendide ; which may be used to equal advantage with the former; and 
3. The Cactier de Campdclie. 
Of these, the first as far as can be determined by description, for the writer had never seen the flower 
or fruit, is the Cactus Tuna of Linnseus ; C. coccinellifer of De Candolle. 
The second appears from the account to be very similar to the former, but larger in its joints (some of 
them thirty inches long,) and very glaucous. 
The third, the C. de Campeche, is, I think without a doubt, our C. cochinillifer, for his whole description, 
and especially the flowers and fi*uit, entirely correspond, and he says of it, from his own experience, that it 
may be usefully employed for rearing the Cochenille sylvestre, and may even support a small quantity of the 
fine kind. 
The celebrated Humboldt also, although he allows that it is the plant upon which the Cochineal has 
often been sent to Europe, asserts, that our Cactus cochinellifer is not the individual of the Mexican No- 
paleries, which he makes a new species, under the name of C. Bonplandii ; and he quotes under it, with a 
mark of doubt, the Cactus Tuna of Linnaeus. At Rio Janeiro, when that place was visited by the 
Chinese Embassy, under Lord Macartney, there were considerable plantations of Cactus, for rearing 
the Cochineal, which had some time previously been introduced into Brazil ; and the plant, which is the 
Cactus Tuna, is represented on the twelfth plate of the atlas of that work. 
I shall further, upon the subject of the kinds of Cactus employed in rearing the Cochineal, only add 
that my excellent friend, the Rev. L. Guilding, who sent me most splendid drawings of this particular 
Cactus, wrote me two years ago from St. Vincent, “I possess a considerable nursery of this Cactus 
inhabited by thousands of the true Coccus Cacti ; and I do not despair of being able to send to the Society 
of Arts a large quantity of dried insects, before the termination of the present year.” In the East Indies 
also, the insect has been extensively propagated ; but we have not the means of knowing whether success- 
fully or otherwise. From all this, we think it may be inferred, that, in Mexico and Brazil, the Cactus Tuma 
is the favorite food of the Cochineal, and that in the West Indian Islands, where the C. Tuna is, perhaps, 
less frequent;, the C. cochinillifer is employed by the natives, and answers the purpose sufficiently well. 
Like all its congeners, C. cochinillifer increases readily by having the joints stuck into the ground ;. and 
the plant loves dry and barren spots. If cultivated for the purpose of rearing the Cactus, it must be de- 
fended, at least in the rainy island of St. Vincent, from storms and winds, by sheds placed windward. It 
there blossoms all the year. The Cochineal insect, which feeds upon the kinds of Cactus just mentioned, is 
too well known to need a particular description here ; as are also its valuable properties in producing the 
dye, which bears its name and carmine. It is the Coccus Cacti of Linneeus, a small insect of the order 
Hymenoptera, having a general appearance not very dissimilar to that of the Mealbug of our gardens, and 
equally covered with a white powdery substance. The male is winged. It is originally a native of Mexico, 
and was cultivated for its precious dye, long before the conquest of that country ; and these plantations, 
called Nopaleros are most extensive in the Misteca and Oaxaca ; the latter district alone has exported, 
according to Humboldt upon the average 32,000 arobas annually, estimated at 2,400,000, piastres, above 
£500,000 sterling. The proprietor of a Nopalery buys in April or May, the branches or joints of the Tunas 
de castilla (Cactus Tuna ;) which are sold in the markets of Oaxaca, at about three francs a hundred, 
loaded with young Cochineals. — Botanical Magazine. 
Mr. Field in his instructive work entitled Chromatography, in speaking of carmines, “says that the 
brightest and most beautiful colours are prepared from cochineal, of a fine powdery texture and velvety richness. 
They vary from a rose colour to a warm red ; work admirably ; and are in other respects, except the most 
essential — the want of durability — excellent pigments in water and oil: — they have not, however, any perma- 
nence in tint with white lead, and in glazing are soon discoloured and destroyed by the action of light, but 
are little affected by impure air.” 
he obtained permission to use the baths of the river Magdalena ; but instead of going thither, he proceeded, through various difficulties 
and dangers, as fast as possible to Guaxaca; where, after making his observations, and obtaining the requisite information, he affected to 
believe that the Cochineal Insects were highly useful in compounding an ointment for his pretended disorder, (the gout,) and therefore 
purchased a quantity of Nopals, covered with these insects of the fine or domestic breed, and putting them in boxes with other plants, for 
their better concealment, he found means to get them away as Botanic trifles, unworthy of notice, notwithstanding the prohibitions by which 
the Spanish Government had endeavoured to hinder their exportation, and being afterwards driven by a violent storm into the bay of Cam- 
peachy, he there found and added to his collection a living Cactus, of a species which was capable of nourishing the fine domesticated 
Cochineal, after which, departing for St. Domingo, he arrived safe with his acquisitions, on the twenty-fifth of September, in the same, at 
Port au Prince. Though almost unaided, M. Thierry de Menonville, then persevered in cultivating, not only the fine Cochineal (which 
he brought from Mexico,) but also the Sylvestre, which he afterwards found wild in St. Domingo, and so successfully, that in 1789, there 
were more than four thousand plants in a single Nopalery, the produce having been ascertained by chemists to be equal in quality to that 
of Mexico. The political troubles in St. Domingo consequent upon the French Revolution, caused the total destruction of these plantations. 
