wax-like kind of lac has lately been found in Madras, the specimens of which, in my possession, consist of single cells, resembling coffee-berries in size and shape; it may prove very valuable in India, where bees'-wax is scarce." Although Blumenbach states this as a recent discovery, Dr. Pearson, in 1794, obtained from the same substance, or white lac, a peculiar acid, which he called laccic acid. Lac appears designed to answer the purpose of defending the eggs of the insect from injury, and affording food for the maggot in a more advanced state. COCHINEAL INSECT. Why was the cochineal insect originally supposed to be a grain or seed? Because, during the whole term of its life, it remains fixed to the spot where it first settled, and to the vegetable nipple of the nopal plant which feeds it. Why are these insects propagated with such rapidity? Because the nopal plant is inoculated with them, by being rubbed with a small portion of the young resembling blight, and, in proportion as the plant increases its leaves, it is sure to be covered with this costly parasite. When the plant is perfectly saturated, the cochineal is scraped off with great care. Plantations containing fifty or sixty thousand trees, growing in straight lines, may be seen in some districts of America. The quantity of insects annually exported from South America is valued at 500,000l. The Spanish Government are jealous of its being naturalized elsewhere, while a reward of 6,000l. is offered by the East India Company for its introduction into our territories.* Cochineal has been transplanted to Java and old Spain, with great success, and on the island of Malta. The wild species of cochineal, or kermes, *The duty on cochineal imported from British possessions is 2d. per Ib., other places, 6d., and the amount for the year 1827 was 4,1621. 13s. 11d. was discovered about three years since among coffee plants and acacias in the Botanic Garden at Cambridge, where the gardeners called them "amelca bugs." Why are the female insects the most valuable? Because they produce the best colour. They are in number to the males as three hundred to one. M. M. Pelletier and Caventon have lately found that their very remarkable colouring matter is mixed with a peculiar animal matter, like fat, and with different salts: they have obtained this colouring matter in great purity and called it carminium. Carmine is a triple compound of an animal matter, carminium, and an acid which enlivens the colour. Why is fine cochineal of a gray colour, inclining to purple? Because the gray is a powder which covers it naturally, a part of which it still retains; and the purple tinge proceeds from the colour extracted by the water in which it has been killed. The important use of cochineal in producing a fine scarlet colour, is now well known. Long after its introduction, however, cochineal gave but a dull kind of crimson, till a chemist named Kuster, about the middle of the sixteenth century, discovered the use of the solution of tin, and the means of preparing with it and cochineal, a durable and beautiful scarlet. The immense consumption of cochineal in England is, in some measure, explained by the prevailing colour of our army clothing being scarlet. LEPIDOPTERA. BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS. Why do butterflies often fly circuitously? Because one sex pursues through the air the track of the other.-Butterflies also migrate in immense swarms. M. Hubert relates the flight of a column of them in Switzerland, about four years since, the passage of which lasted upwards of two hours, and extended in breadth from ten to fifteen feet. He also describes their flight as low, rapid, and equal. Why are butterflies believed to explain the showers of blood recorded by superstitious historians? Because many of these insects when evolved from the pupa state, void a red-coloured matter resembling blood. Mouffet tells us, from Sleidan, that in the year 1553, a prodigious multitude of butterflies swarmed throughout a great portion of Germany, and sprinkled plants, leaves, buildings, clothes, and men, with bloody drops, as if it had rained blood. Several historians, indeed, have recorded showers of blood among the prodigies which have struck nations with terror, as the supposed omen of the destruction of cities and the overthrow of empires. The error was first detected by M. Peiresc, a philosopher, of Aix, who, at the time of a rumoured shower of blood, happened to have a large chrysalis in a box, which, changing into a butterfly, left a red stain of the same nature with the drops of the shower popularly supposed to be blood. Why is the humming-bird hawk-moth so called? Because of its vigilance and animation, equal to the splendid meteoric bird of the tropics, and not on account of its resemblance in colour; since our plain and dusky insect has none of the glorious hues of the bird. The least movement alarms this moth; though Nature seems to have given it some essential requisites for its safety. Its activity, when on the wing, renders its capture difficult, and when it rests, it is on a wall, the bark of trees, &c. Why is the Atropos moth so called? Because of its origin from Atropos, the third Fate, it being a great destroyer of bees. |