Insect manufactures

by Anonymous

The sowing of cochineal, as it is called, is performed at day-break, the insects being conveyed from the old plants and attached to the new. For this purpose they are placed in little nests made by the natives, and attached with thorns to the leaves of the nopal. Here they quickly multiply to an astonishing extent. A nopalerie is in perfection six years, after which the insects are taken away and the plants cut down.

The cochineal harvest takes place every year as soon as the young insects begin to run about. Assembling his friends, old and young, the owner of the cochineal ground enters it at break of day with a crowd of men, women, and children, provided with knives six inches long and two wide, and also with dishes and with baskets. The blade of the knife is rounded at the top, so as to injure neither the insect nor the plant; this is passed gently between the skin of the nopal and the clusters of cochineals with which it is covered, causing the latter to fall into the dish or basket, which the left hand holds ready to receive them. A child of ten years old may thus gather ten pounds of insects in a day, which being killed and dried will yield about three pounds and a half of cochineal. The best method of killing the insects is by pouring boiling water on them, and allowing it to remain one, two, or three minutes. The water is preserved, as it necessarily has some of the colouring matter of the insects; the latter are spread out to dry in the sun and wind, being turned occasionally by hand. Ten persons, it is said, can thus prepare two hundred pounds of cochineal in two days. Such is the history given by de Menonville himself, in his volumes entitled ‘Voyage à Guaxaca.’ Baron Humboldt, describing the management of cochineals in this and in other parts of South America, gives some additional particulars. He ascertained that in a colder climate, the colour of the cochineal is equally fine, but the harvests are more uncertain. Plains or valleys are generally more favourable to the rapid increase of the cochineals than elevated ground, but such places also abound in insect enemies, and in lizards, rats, and birds, which devour the crop. Great care is required in clearing all the joints of the nopals: for this purpose Indian women use a squirrel’s or a stag’s tail, and will sit for hours crouched near a single plant. Notwithstanding the high price of cochineal, it is very doubtful whether the trade would answer in any country where labour is more valuable. In some parts of Guaxaca (called by Humboldt Oaxaca), they obtain three harvests of cochineal in the year, the first being the least lucrative, because the bodies of the insects yield very little colouring matter when they die naturally, and this is the case at the first harvest, when they have just brought forth their young. Many of the negro proprietors of nopaleries, especially those in the neighbourhood of Oaxaca, have a very ancient and singular custom of making their cochineals emigrate during the rainy season. As the Spaniard causes his flocks of merinos to emigrate on the approach of cold, so do these negroes send away their crop during a season which might prove fatal to them. The insects are packed in hampers, and carried as quickly as possible, on the backs of negroes, to a place nine leagues distant from the town, not so heavily visited with rain. Here they distribute them on the nopals, and keep them there till the month of October, when they return with their freight, and replace it in the nopaleries of Oaxaca.

The plantations of cochineal cultivated by M. Thierry, at St. Domingo, were so successful that in 1789 there were more than four thousand plants in a single nopalerie, and the produce was ascertained by chemists to be quite equal to that of Mexico; but at the time of the French Revolution, the political troubles of St. Domingo caused the destruction of the plantations. Cochineal has been cultivated with some success in several of the British West India islands. Thus the Rev. L. Guilding, writing a few years ago to Dr. Hooker, says, “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.”

So important was the acquisition of this insect to the East India Company, that they offered a reward of six thousand pounds to any one who should introduce it into India, where hitherto the Company had only succeeded in procuring from Brazil the wild kind producing the sylvestre cochineal, which is of inferior value. The true cochineal insect, and the cactus on which it feeds, are said to have been of late years successfully introduced into Spain and the French colony of Algiers, and now exist in the stores of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and also in those of King Leopold at Claremont.

Stephens, in his Travels in Central America, does not omit to notice the cultivation of this insect, which was carried on extensively in the neighbourhood of the ruined city of La Antigua Guatimala. “Emerging from the city,” he says, “we entered the open plain, shut in by mountains, and cultivated to their base with cochineal. At about a mile’s distance we turned into the hacienda of Señor Vidaury. In the yard were four oxen grinding sugar-cane, and behind was his nopal or cochineal plantation, one of the largest in the Antigua. The plant is a species of cactus, set out in rows like Indian corn, and, at the time I speak of, it was about four feet high. On every leaf was pinned with a thorn a piece of cane, in the hollow of which were thirty or forty insects. These insects cannot move, but breed, and the young crawl out and fasten upon the leaf. When they have once fixed, they never move; a light film gathers over them, and as they feed, the leaves become mildewed and white. At the end of the dry season some of the leaves are cut off and hung up in a storehouse for seed, the insects are brushed off from the rest and dried, and are then sent to minister to the luxuries and elegancies of civilized life, and enliven with their bright colours the salons of London, Paris, and St. Louis in Missouri. The crop is valuable, but uncertain, as an early rain may destroy it, and sometimes all the workmen are taken away for soldiers at the moment when they are most needed for its culture. The situation was ravishingly beautiful, at the base and under the shade of the Volcano de Agua, and the view was bounded on all sides by mountains of perpetual green; the morning air was soft and balmy, but pure and refreshing. With good government and good laws, and one’s friends around, I never saw a more beautiful spot on which man could desire to pass his allotted time on earth.”

1. BRANCH COVERED WITH LAC. 2. SMALL TWIG LADEN WITH LAC. 3. PORTION OF LAC (magnified). 4, 5, 6. LAC INSECT IN ITS SEVERAL FORMS.

CHAPTER VII.
MANUFACTURE OF GUM LAC BY THE LAC INSECT.

Another insect of the same family as the cochineal, prepares a substance called gum lac, which is used as a dye, and also as a varnish. This is the lac insect, (coccus lacca,) found on several kinds of trees in the East Indies, especially in the uncultivated mountains on both sides the Ganges, where it is produced in such abundance, that were the consumption ten times greater than it is, the markets might be readily supplied. So great is the accumulation of these insects on the trees which they frequent, that the branches appear as if covered with red dust, and their sap is so much exhausted, that they wither and produce no fruit: the leaves also drop off, or turn to a blackish hue. The insects fix themselves so close together, that it is supposed that not more than one in six can have room to complete her cell. It is said they are transplanted from place to place by birds, which cannot perch upon the branches without carrying off a number to the next place they rest upon.

The female, when about to lay her eggs, becomes completely glued to the branch by a semi-pellucid liquid, which accumulates round the body, and hardens by exposure to the air. This is the gum lac, the original use of which is to form a cell for the young. When the eggs are laid, the parent insect becomes a mere lifeless bag of an oval shape, containing a small quantity of beautiful red liquid. On this liquid the young insects feed as soon as they come to life; after which they pierce the cell, and come forth one by one. Some small branches of mimosa cinerea, gathered when the lac was in a very fresh looking state, became covered with myriads of exceedingly minute animals at the end of fourteen days. They issued from small holes over the surface of the cells, and when single ran about pretty briskly; but in general they were so numerous as to be crowded over one another. The cells themselves were very much like amber; the outer portion was strong and resisting, but the partitions of the interior were thinner, and formed irregular squares, pentagons, and hexagons, having no communication with each other.