Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/95

MEXICO. 63 and opening only at night, whence the French name for it, Belle de nuit. The quantity exported from Veracruz seldom exceeds three thousand quintals. COCHINEAL. Cochineal is another of the precious productions which Nature seems to have bestowed, almost exclusively, upon Mexico ; for the insect bearing the same name in the Brazils is of a very inferior kind. It is that known by the natu- ralists as Grana Silvestre, and the dye extracted from it is neither so brilliant, nor so durable, as that of the Grana Fina, with which Mexico supplies the European market. The Grana Fina, at its utmost growth, resembles a bug in size and colour, with the exception of a mealy, or whitish powder, through which the rings, or cross stripes on the back of the insect, are distinctly visible : The female alone produces the dye ; the males are smaller, and one is found sufficient for three hundred females. According to Humboldt, the insect is bred on a species of Cactus, (Opuntia, or Indian fig,) the fruit of which is white. The Cochineal feeds only upon the leaf. The process of rearing it is complicated, and attended with much diffi- culty : the leaves of the Nopal, on which the eggs are depo- sited, must be kept free from all extraneous substances, and in the Cochineal districts the Indian women are seen bending over them for hours together, and brushing them lightly with a squirrel's tail. In a good year, one pound of Semilla, deposited upon the plant in October, will yield, in December, twelve pounds of Cochineal, leaving a sufficient quantity of seed behind to give a second crop in May. The plantations of the Cochineal Cactus are confined to the district of La Misteca, in the state of Oaxaca. Some of these Haciendas de Nopales contain from fifty, to sixty, thou-