Page:EB1911 - Volume 06.djvu/642

Rh reached a value of £3,816,000, and imports a value of £4,834,000 (not including treasure and transit trade).

Government and Administration.—Cochin-China is administered by a lieutenant-governor under the authority of the governor-general of Indo-China. He is assisted by the conseil colonial numbering sixteen members, six of whom are French citizens elected by the French, six natives elected by the natives, the other four being members of the chamber of commerce of Saigon and the conseil privé. The conseil colonial, besides its advisory functions, discusses and votes the budget, determines the nature of the taxes, has supreme control over the tariffs, and extensive powers in the administration of colonial domains. The conseil privé is a deliberative body under the presidency of the lieutenant-governor, composed of colonial officials together with two native members. The colony is divided into four circumscriptions (Saigon, My-Tho, Vinh-Long, Bassac), at the head of each of which is an inspector of native affairs. These are subdivided into twenty provinces, each administered by an administrator of native affairs by whose side is the provincial council consisting of natives and occupied with the discussion of ways and means and questions of public works. The provinces are divided into cantons and subdivided into communes. The commune forms the basis of the native social system. Its assembly of notables or municipal council forms a sort of oligarchy, the members of which themselves elect individuals from among the more prominent inhabitants to fill vacancies. The notables elect the provincial councillors in the proportion, usually, of one to every canton, and their delegates elect the chief of the canton, who voices the wishes of the natives to the government. Local administration, e.g. supervision of markets, policing, land-transfer, &c., are carried on by a mayor and two assistants, to whom the municipal council delegates its powers. The same body draws up the list of males liable to the poll-tax and of the lands liable to land-tax, these being the chief sources of revenue. There are French tribunals of first instance in nine of the chief towns of the colony, and in four of these there are criminal courts. These administer justice in accordance both with French law and, in the case of natives, with Annamese law, which has been codified for the purpose. Saigon has two chambers of the court of appeal of French Indo-China and a tribunal of commerce. Primary instruction is given in some six hundred schools. Cochin-China is represented in the French chamber by a deputy. The capital is (q.v.); of the other towns,  (q.v.), My-Tho, Vinh-Long and Chau-Doc are of importance.

In 1904 the budget receipts amounted to £495,241 (as compared with £474,545 in 1899). To this sum the land and poll-tax and other direct taxes contributed £374,630. The main heads of expenditure, of which the total was £467,328, were as follows:—

History.—The Khmer kingdom (see ), at its zenith from the 9th to the 12th centuries, included a large portion of the modern colony of Cochin-China, the coastal portion and perhaps the eastern region being under the dominion of the empire of Champa, which broke up during the 15th century. This eastern region was occupied in the 17th century by the Annamese, who in the 18th century absorbed the western provinces. From this period the history of Cochin-China follows that of (q.v.) till 1867, when it was entirely occupied by the French and became a French colony. In 1887 it was united with Cambodia, Annam and Tongking to form the Indo-Chinese Union (see ).

 COCHINEAL, a natural dye-stuff used for the production of scarlet, crimson, orange and other tints, and for the preparation of lake and carmine. It consists of the females of Coccus cacti, an insect of the family Coccidae of the order Hemiptera, which feeds upon various species of the Cactaceae, more especially the nopal plant, Opuntia coccinellifera, a native of Mexico and Peru. The dye was introduced into Europe from Mexico, where it had been in use long before the entrance of the Spaniards in the year 1518, and where it formed one of the staple tributes to the crown for certain districts. In 1523 Cortes received instructions from the Spanish court to procure it in as large quantities as possible. It appears not to have been known in Italy so late as the year 1548, though the art of dyeing then flourished there. Cornelius van Drebbel, at Alkmaar, first employed cochineal for the production of scarlet in 1650. Until about 1725 the belief was very prevalent that cochineal was the seed of a plant, but Dr Martin Lister in 1672 conjectured it to be a kind of kermes, and in 1703 Antony van Leeuwenhoek ascertained its true nature by aid of the microscope. Since its introduction cochineal has supplanted kermes (Coccus ilicis) over the greater part of Europe.

The male of the cochineal insect is half the size of the female, and, unlike it, is devoid of nutritive apparatus; it has long white wings, and a body of a deep red colour, terminated by two diverging setae. The female is apterous, and has a dark-brown plano-convex body; it is found in the proportion of 150 to 200 to one of the male insect. The dead body of the mother insect serves as a protection for the eggs until they are hatched. Cochineal is now furnished not only by Mexico and Peru, but also by Algiers and southern Spain. It is collected thrice in the seven months of the season. The insects are carefully brushed from the branches of the cactus into bags, and are then killed by immersion in hot water, or by exposure to the sun, steam, or the heat of an oven—much of the variety of appearance in the commercial article being caused by the mode of treatment. The dried insect has the form of irregular, fluted and concave grains, of which about 70,000 go to a pound. Cochineal has a musty and bitterish taste. There are two principal varieties—silver cochineal, which has a greyish-red colour, and the furrows of the body covered with a white bloom or fine down; and black cochineal, which is of a dark reddish brown, and destitute of bloom. Granilla is an inferior kind, gathered from uncultivated plants. The best crop is the first of the season, which consists of the unimpregnated females; the later crops contain an admixture of young insects and skins, which contain proportionally little colouring matter.

The black variety of cochineal is sometimes sold for silver cochineal by shaking it with powdered talc or heavy-spar; but these adulterations can be readily detected by means of a lens. The duty in the United Kingdom on imported cochineal was repealed in 1845.

Cochineal owes its tinctorial power to the presence of a substance termed cochinealin or carminic acid, C17H18O10, which may be prepared from the aqueous decoction of cochineal. Cochineal also contains a fat and wax; cochineal wax or coccerin, C30H60(C31H61O3)2, may be extracted by benzene, the fat is a glyceryl myristate C3H5(C14H27O2)3.

 COCHLAEUS, JOHANN (1479–1552), German humanist and controversialist, whose family name was Dobneck, was born of poor parents in 1479 at Wendelstein (near Nuremberg), whence his friends gave him the punning surname Cochlaeus (spiral), for which he occasionally substituted Wendelstinus. Having received some education at Nuremberg from the humanist Heinrich Grieninger, he entered (1504) the university of Cologne. In 1507 he graduated, and published under the name of Wendelstein his first piece, In musicam exhortatorium. He left Cologne (May 1510) to become schoolmaster at Nuremberg, where he brought out several school manuals. In 1515 he was at Bologna, hearing (with disgust) Eck’s famous disputation against usury, and associating with Ulrich von Hutten and humanists. He took his doctor’s degree at Ferrara (1517), and spent some time in Rome, where he was ordained priest. In 1520 he became dean of the Liebfrauenkirche at Frankfort, where he first entered the lists as a controversialist against the party of Luther, developing that bitter hatred to the Reformation which animated his forceful but shallow ascription of the movement to the meanest motives, due to a quarrel between the Dominicans and Augustinians. Luther would not meet him in discussion at Mainz in 1521. He was present at the diets of Worms, Regensburg, Spires and