COCHINEAL, koch'i-nel, one of the scale insects (Coccus cacti), used as a dye. It is a native of Mexico, but has been introduced into Europe, Algiers, and the Canary Islands, where the plantations of cactus were cultivated for their nourishment. It is a small insect with the body wrinkled transversely; its abdomen of a deep mulberry color, and bristly in the pos terior part ; the legs are short and black. The principal district in which they are now reared is in the province of Oaxaca, those of the dis trict of Mestique being considered the best insects. There are plantations of the nopal (Opuntia ciccinellifera), upon which they feed, the insects being tended with care equal to that ordinarily bestowed upon silkworms. Before the rainy season sets in, branches of the nopal covered with insects are cut off and brought under shelter to protect them from the weather. At the close of the wet season, about the middle of October, the plantations are stocked from these supplies by suspending little nests made of some soft woody fibre, each containing 8 or 10 females, upon the spines of the nopal. The insects, warmed by the sun, soon emerge and lay their eggs, each female producing more than 1,000 young. These spread rapidly over the plants, and as the young females become im pregnated they attach themselves to the leaves and swell to great size, presenting the appear ance more of vegetable excrescences than of animated creatures. In this condition they are gathered for the cochineal. The males, which are few in number, not more than 1 to 100 or 200 females, are of no value for this purpose. The females are picked off with a blunt knife, the first crop about the middle of December, and subsequently several more of as many suc cessive generations, the last being in May. A laborer can pick off in a day only about enough to make two ounces of cochineal. Those
taken off full of young lose about two-thirds of their weight in the process of drying, to which they are subjected as soon as they are killed, which is done either by dipping them in a basket into boiling water, or placing them in a hot oven, or on plates of hot iron. By the first method, usually considered the best, the insects turn to a brownish red color, losing a portion of the white powder with which they were previously loaded between the wrinkles of the body. In the oven they retain this, and their color is then gray. Those killed on hot iron turn black. Such is the origin of the different varieties known in our market as °silver grains and black grains' and the °foxy° of the London market, the last being those killed by boiling water, though others ascribe it to the former being the female before laying her eggs, and the latter after she has parted from them. The quality of the cochineal is the same in both cases. When dried, the cochineal presents the form of grains, convex on one side and concave on the other, about one-eighth of an inch in diameter, with the transverse wrinkles still vis ible. It is stated that it takes about 70,000 insects to weigh a pound. The market value of cochineal has declined so much since the intro duction of coal-tar dyes that the cultivation of the insects has been abandoned elsewhere than in Mexico, and comparatively little of this dye is now produced even there. See SCALE INSECTS.
a name given to Nopalea coccinellifera and several other species of cacti, natives of Mexico and the West Indies, the plants on which the cochineal insect lives.
See CACTUS; COCHINEAL.