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languages, bringing out the fact that these creatures are dedicated to Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, or in other cases to God, for reasons not explained. In France they are called God's horses, Chevaux de Dieu, in England ladybirds or cowladies, and so forth.

To these familiar ladybirds,

such exact resemblance is borne by the little animals which produce the cochineal, that one egg could scarcely be more like another, if only you except the size, in which the American beetle is observed to surpass ours, and the color, which is not vividly red or scarlet or yellow in the foreign species, but dull and brownish, with the spots red, the latter larger than those on our beetles.

The modern entomologist begins to wonder what all this has to do with