Packard.] INSECTS OF THE PLANT HOUSE. 
115 
Yunnan. In the district of Hochin and Why-li-tzou, where 
the culture of the eggs is alone attended to, both frost and 
Snow are experienced, so that it would not be difficult to rear 
the insect in Europe, and considering its prolific nature, the 
production of white wax might repay the trouble of accli¬ 
matizing this curious insect.” 
A near relation of the wax is the cochineal insect which 
affords us such an invaluable dye (carmine). This insect 
(Fig. 78, showing the wingless female, natural size and en¬ 
larged, and the two-winged male) is now abundant on the 
prickly pear in one corner of our Union (Key West) where 
we have found both sexes in great abundance. The “grain” 
is the female Coccus dried. So much 
has been written about this useful in¬ 
sect, of its mode of life and the 
methods of collecting and preparing 
it that we will not weary our readers 
with a repetition of it. Its value, 
however, in commerce is very great. 
In 1855, before red garments became 
fashionable, says Dr. Lankester in 
his “Uses of Animals,” Great Britain 
imported 1400 tons of cochineal (it takes 70,000 of these in¬ 
sects to make a pound) which was valued at about £700,000, 
and since then their consumption has probably greatly in¬ 
creased. “Carmine,” he adds, “is one of the most powerful 
of coloring matters; one grain of it, it is said, will dye a 
single silk fibre upwards of three thousand yards in length.” 
Other kinds of Coccus produce a carmine dye, and our 
own species, were the individuals sufficiently abundant, could 
be used for this purpose. Before cochineal was introduced 
into Europe, the bodies of another kind of Coccus, known as 
“grains of Kermes,” were used in Europe, especially about 
the shores of the Mediterranean. Lankester says that “it is 
found extensively in Algeria, and the red Fez caps, which 
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