See generally Miall and Denny, The Structure and Life History of the Cockroach (1887); G. H. Carpenter, Insects: their Structure and Life (1899); Charles Lester Marlatt, Household Insects (U.S. Department of Agriculture, revised edition, 1902); Leland Ossian Howard, The Insect Book (1902).
[1] The word is a corruption of Sp. cucaracha. In America it is commonly abbreviated to “roach.”
COCK’S-COMB, in botany, a cultivated form of Celosia cristata (natural order Amarantaceae), in which the inflorescence is monstrous, forming a flat “fasciated” axis bearing numerous small flowers. The plant is a low-growing herbaceous annual, bearing a large, comb-like, dark red, scarlet or purplish mass of flowers. Seeds are sown in March or April in pans of rich, well-drained sandy soil, which are placed in a hot-bed at 65° to 70° in a moist atmosphere. The seedlings require plenty of light, and when large enough to handle are potted off and placed close to the glass in a frame under similar conditions. When the heads show they are shifted into 5-in. pots, which are plunged to their rims in ashes or coco-nut fibre refuse, in a hot-bed, as before, close to the glass; they are sparingly watered and more air admitted. The soil recommended is a half-rich sandy loam and half-rotten cow and stable manure mixed with a dash of silver sand. The other species of Celosia cultivated are C. pyramidalis, with a pyramidal inflorescence, varying in colour in the great number of varieties, and C. argentea, with a dense white inflorescence. They require a similar cultural treatment to that given for C. cristata.
COCKTON, HENRY (1807-1853), English humorous novelist, was born in London on the 7th of December 1807. He published a number of volumes, but is best known as the author of Valentine Vox, the Ventriloquist (1840) and Sylvester Sound, the Somnambulist (1844). He died at Bury St Edmunds on the 26th of June 1853.
COCKX (or Cock), HIERONYMUS [Jerome] (1510-1570), Flemish painter and engraver, was born at Antwerp, and in 1545 was admitted to the Gild of St Luke as a painter. It is as an engraver, however, that he is famous, a number of portraits and subject-pictures by him, and reproductions of Flemish masters, being well known. His brother Matthys (1505-1552) was also a painter.